'Fake Leftist Pipe Dreams'

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Re your May 2 article on the divestment rally:

It is the black workers in South Africa who will deal the deathblow to apartheid, but as fellow members of the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee noted earlier this year, Damon Silvers of the DSA cannot bring himself to support the heroic struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) and instead focuses on the U.S. and South African white ruling class as the vehicle for change. The Spartacus Youth League does not share the illusion that if Harvard divests from companies doing business in South Africa, the rest of the world will follow suit, causing as economic collapse and the subsequent reform of apartheid. This is a pipe dream, designed to soothe the guilty consciences of liberal Harvard students and "morally purify" their university. This is what divestment is about, and this is why the campus fake-leftists did their best to drown us out when we took the opportunity between speeches to chant "Black Labor is the key to smash apartheid slavery" and "Put Botha on the run, ANC fighters need Russian guns." I might add that at an April 6 demonstration at Tufts University to protest the scheduled appearance of Henry Kissinger there, the demonstration organizers scheduled two open-mike sessions to allow different groups the opportunity to express their politics. This was a welcome relief from the way Harvard's campus radicals try to run the political life here--with an iron fist. Dean Wareham '85   for the Spartacus Youth League