In Brazil the Ministry responsible for advising the President of the Republic of Brazil on the formulation and execution of Brazilian foreign policy, the Foreign Office, is in the National language the “Ministério das Relações Exteriores”, Ministry of External Relations¹.

The foreign policy advised by Itamaraty dealt with apartheid as something external to Brazil, and permanently maintained relations with that regime as well as allowed all forms of exchange – the ministry only followed presidential guidelines, respectively from the military regime President Geisel in 1975² voting in favour of UN resolution condemning apartheid and in 1985³ the ministry became more attentive in monitoring selective sanctions which were determined by Decree issued by President José Sarney. That decree met in a restricted way demands for comprehensive sanctions coming from the anti-racist Black movements in Brazil⁴, which contributed to making foreign policy a public policy.

The former Brazilian Committee of Solidarity with the Peoples of South Africa and Namibia – COMÁFRICA, from its establishment on 22 August, 1985, spearheaded the global movement against apartheid in Brazil, and had as objective “the peaceful, according to Brazilian laws, solidarity work with the peoples of South Africa and Namibia, to the effect of mobilising Brazilian public opinion, proposing to the government support measures in favour of those oppressed peoples, and, against the colonialist and apartheid government of South Africa, and recognising the national liberation movements.”⁵

Comafrica.org continues, as did the Joint Institutes for International Relations IURI-INEAFRIC, the cradle in which its purpose was nurtured⁶, to link academic research to the implementation of the foreign policy as a public policy.
Memória Comáfrica/Comafrica Archives as a constituent part of this International Relations Area of the www.comafrica.org site, shall illustrate how, in the second half of the XXth Century, social movements with political density, considering that they supported national liberation and racial equality struggles, had succeeded in conducting their peoples and governments, at different commitment levels, to internationally isolate the Apartheid regime.

Such contribution by those social movements outside South Africa and Namibia succeeded in shaping a global and enduring solidarity, since above all it was based on the principle of the unity in action as practised by the main national liberation movements of those countries at the time.

The solidarity of the Brazilian people with the African peoples in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa and against colonialism in Namibia since the 1950’s until the abolition of apartheid in 1994, has a rich history, which was of no less significance than that of the movements with both density and global media reach such as those in the United Kingdom, in the Netherlands, in the US and in various other European, African and Asian countries.

This solidarity from the Brazilian people largely rooted in the very struggle against racism in Brazil, lead to the principle of repudiation of racism to be enshrined among the fundamental principles governing the International Relations of Brazil, in the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988. That was a result of Brazilian civil society actions against apartheid that found a voice through leaders such as Constitutional Assembly Member Benedita da Silva⁷.

That Memory, based on archives maintained and retrieved by Instituto Comáfrica, shall allow navigation in a world of solidarity, considering that the anti-apartheid struggle from which Comáfrica originated, lead to an international solidarity movement, the modus operandi of which was a kind of a prelude to a successful international linkage of social movements, a forerunner of the networking of global movements seeking the assertion in the XXIst Century of the globalisation of peoples as an alternative to the globalisation of capital.

The areas opened for Comafrica.org involvement in and contribution to International Relations are rooted in our memory and we shall keep them as alive today as in the past:

• a) Citizens Diplomacy, that is the diplomacy which advises the civil society of “those from below”⁸, in the formulation and carrying out of foreign policy as public policy – the Foreign policy “from below”.
• b) South-South Cooperation – as an NGO ranking among those pioneering the practice of Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) in Brazil, as it did when promoting TCDC with national liberation movements of South Africa and Namibia in the 1980’s, Comáfrica.org wants to contribute to the achievement of genuine international cooperation⁹.

Consequently we are prioritising the dissemination of information on examples of successful developments in research capacity in the Southern Countries in their search for solutions for the challenges they face and of innovative solutions as proposed for economic cooperation, more especially in what concerns the relations among African countries or their relations with Latin America well as with India in view of the establishment of the India, Brazil and South Africa Dialogue Forum¹⁰.

Comafrica.org is open to develop other research areas and areas for dissemination of information in International Relations that are connected with its purpose of reconstructing international cooperation by retrieving the heritage of solidarity, providing for the dissemination of information and for the revitalization of public spaces, creating a space for cooperation with Africa in Rio de Janeiro.