South Africa

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In the last three months there have been several major developments in the struggle for racial equality and justice in South Africa. A new constitution has been put into effect, and the brutal treatment of those opposed, both enfranchised coloreds and Black South Africans alike, to the more sophisticated and modernized from of apartheid has proven President Botha's so-called reform to be nothing more than deception.

As South African police jail, shoot and teargas protestors in the streets, all the mass movements of South Africa's Blacks, from the African National Congress to the South African Council of Churches, call upon the West to sever corporate ties to their government, to stop doing business with their racist-based society. It is at this critical time that the Harvard Corporation and President Bok have come out not only against Harvard's divestment of stock in companies currently doing business in South Africa, but also in favor of United States corporate involvement in that country.

The Corporation and President Bok have made this decision in spite of the recommendation of their own Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, that Harvard must sell its stock in all companies involved with the apartheid regime.

We want the leaders of Black South Africa, who year after year have called for institutional and municipal divestments, and who have been tortured, imprisoned and even murdered for this conviction, to know that President Bok and the eight white males of the Corporation stand alone in their hypocrisy, that the expressed will of the Harvard community is to reject sharing in the profits gained from the misery and exploitation of their people. We want the leaders of Black South Africa to know that just as we have won with the ACSR we are winning with the Corporation. Harvard must and will divest. It is only a matter of time.

Look at President Bok's "open letter" on the issue. His arguments, the same arguments he has used for 10 years, are stale, unconvincing and thoroughly contradictory. He does not even take into account or attempt to address the points made in the ACSR report, or by the numerous members of the community who have expressed their reasons for advocating divestment. He ignores the fact that municipalities such as Cambridge. Boston and New York, states such as Massachusetts, and other institutions such as University of Michigan have declared that divestment is not only a prudent but an ethically necessary course to take. We question Bok's commitment to informed debate and well-reasoned argument; we question his belief in discourse in light of his obvious disbelief in listening.

Bok's first argument against Harvard's divestment is that such an action would cause the University to lose its autonomy. Bok writes that there is an implicit agreement between institutions and corporations to stay out of each other's business. If we were to begin pressuring corporations to behave ethically, then corporations would begin to pressure us to remove certain professors with "radical opinions," to change our positions toward ROTC or "involvement in covert CIA activities." Besides the obvious and pathetic attempt at demogoguery, President Bok's reasoning is simply invalid.

How can Bok claim that Harvard presently enjoys any degree of autonomy if its very actions are so limited because of the fear of corporate reprisal? What freedoms do we have as an institution if we are barred from taking the most basic of moral stands? If we cannot apply even minimal pressure, then what likelihood is there that United States companies will take seriously our views on corporate behavior? Of what use is the intensive dialogue which Bok speaks of so highly, if we refuse to offer incentives to corporations to make concrete changes?

The next arguments which Bok attempts to make were all dealt with and refused at length by the Advisory Committee. Bok argues that Harvard's divestment alone would not have the effect of forcing U.S. companies to withdraw. This is, of course, true, as the ACSR acknowledge. But we must consider not merely the individual effects of Harvard's divestment, but the cumulative effect of divestments all over the country. If all that mattered was the result of the individual action, who, asks the ACSR, would ever write a letter to a senator?

Bok claims that U.S. corporate withdrawal would not matter to the South Africans, since either local interests or foreign concerns would move in. This is clearly not the case however. Only the multinational U.S. corporations can supply the wherewithal to successfully maintain the South African regime. The crucial supports of apartheid, oil, vehicles, computers and capital could not be furnished in the same numbers by smaller foreign firms. Although South Africa has tried since the 1950s to achieve self-sufficiency, even the top-ranking government officials would concede that this self-sufficiency is still a long way away. J.B. Vorster, the former Prime Minister of South Africa, has stated, "Each trade agreement, each bank loan, each new investment is another brick in the wall of our continued existence." (E. Schmidt, Decoding Corporate Camouflage U.S. Business Support for Apartheid, 1980) If divestment and corporate withdrawal have the negligible effect which Bok claims, why has the South African government spent over three million dollars each year in the United States alone on anti-divestment lobbying?

Bok writes that corporations can do more good in South African than out of it. He fails to realize that these corporations employ less than one percent of the Black labor force and the work place reforms which he encourages affect only that small fraction of the exploited. He fails to realize that the incredibly high profits which keep U.S. corporations attracted to South Africa are the direct results of the cheap labor supplied by the country's Blacks. He fails to realize that U.S. corporations therefore have a stake in maintaining the apartheid regime. He fails to realize that the oppressive conditions in South Africa could not be changed but U.S. corporations even if they wanted to, because the causes of these conditions are enshrined in South African law.

Corporate withdrawal and increasing political ostracism would clearly make South Africa a pariah to the world community. The sense of security that the white South African government derives from its connection with the West would be lost, once that connection is severed. The South African masses will in our lifetimes rise up against their oppressive minority rules. If the confidence of that minority rule has been shaken, if the supports of that rule have been removed, than the amount of bloodshed will be lessened, the chances for peaceful transition increased, the days of suffering reduced.

President Bok and the Corporation stand alone. We are winning. Black South Africa will win.

Anthony A. fall'86

Sam Rickless '56

Southern African Solidarity Committee

Michael Anderson HISI

Law School Divestment Committee