Have You Heard from Johannesburg is a 2010 series of seven documentary films, covering the 45-year struggle of the global anti-apartheid movement against South Africa's apartheid system and its international supporters who considered them an ally in the Cold War.
Have You Heard From Johannesburg takes viewers inside that last arena, the movement to mobilise worldwide citizen action to isolate the apartheid regime.
The struggle came to many surprising venues: it was waged in sports arenas and cathedrals, in embassies and corporate boardrooms, at fruit stands and beaches, at rock concerts and gas stations.
Thousands died, but in the end, nonviolent pressures played a major part in the collapse of apartheid and thus in the stunning victory of democracy in South Africa.
The black majority in South Africa, led by the African National Congress, mounted the Defiance Campaign, attracting the attention of activists in places like England, Sweden, and the United States - and sowed the seeds of an international anti-apartheid movement.
He first found allies in the newly independent countries of Africa, and with their collective strength behind him, he approached the United Nations for support, insisting that the apartheid government could be forced to the negotiating table if the Security Council would sanction and isolate the regime.
He successfully petitioned the Soviet Union for help in building a guerrilla army, a decision that landed Tambo and the African National Congress in the vice of the Cold War and haunted his global efforts for years to come.
But two individuals helped to open crucial doors in the West: Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, and Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, whose early support inspired Oliver Tambo to seek out strategic partnerships with faith leaders worldwide.
But South Africa's strongest trading partners in the West still would not sanction it economically, and as Tambo headed to Zambia to minister to the African National Congress' growing guerrilla army, a bloodbath seemed inevitable.
Knowing that fellow blacks in South Africa were denied even the most basic human rights - let alone the right to participate in international sports competitions - African nations refused to compete with all-white South African teams, boycotted the Olympics and created a worldwide media spectacle that forced the International Olympic Committee to ban apartheid teams from future games.
Have You Heard from Johannesburg: The Bottom Line The six film is the story of the first-ever international grassroots campaign to successfully use economic pressure to help bring down a government.
Recognizing the apartheid regime's dependence on its financial connections to the West, citizens all over the world, from employees of Polaroid to a General Motors director, from student account-holders in Barclays Bank to consumers who boycott Shell gas, all refused to let business with South Africa go on as usual.
Faced with growing international isolation, the apartheid government tried to win allies and convince the world of the merit of its piecemeal reforms even as it struggled to suppress open revolt, at times using savage secret tactics.
But the struggle had taken a heavy toll on him and he would die one year before his comrade, Nelson Mandela, is elected the first black president of a democratic South Africa.