29 June

On the same day in 1986, Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi denounced a US bill proposing sanctions against the apartheid regime. His words, asserting that blacks ‘want more jobs, not less jobs. They want more investment, not less investment’, were seized upon by US president Ronald Reagan, who urged western governments to ‘resist this emotional clamour for punitive sanctions’. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher lined up alongside Buthelezi and Reagan, and against the ‘terrorist’ Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.