Our Shantytown

WHEN THE SHANTIES went up in Harvard Yard, so did the hopes of the University's divestment activists. Here was their chance to rally the student body decisively and visibly behind their call for the Corporation to divest itself of stocks in companies which do business in South Africa.

It was a strategy that had paid some dividends at other schools, where construction of shantytowns led to mass protests in favor of divestment. But it hasn't worked here. The shantytown is a failure. Now, as the hopes of divestment activists are plummeting to the ground, it is time to bring the shanties down with them.

Building the shantytown was a valuable enterprise, if only to see the depth of the student body's commitment to divestment. Polls among students at the College and at the Law School seemed to indicate widespread support for divestment. The shantytown, it was hoped, could bridge the gap between people's beliefs and their willingess to actively support them.

Events have proven SASC wrong for believing that general support for divestment would translate into support for a shantytown. The embarassingly low attendance at the shantytown is indicative of the lack of enthusiasm it has generated among students. In some cases, this lack of support has descended into outright mockery.

There is nothing wrong behind the idea of the shanties. Aesthetics are irrelevant here. The point is they just haven't worked. SASC should look upon the shanties as a legitimate experiment in civil disobedience that failed--a failure which reflects poorly upon a student body in favor of divestment but unwilling to do something about it.

While dismantling the shanties, then, SASC members would do well to recognize student self-absorption and try to come up with new ways to gain student involvement.

Still, SASC is itself the source of many of its frustrations. The inconsistency and stridency of much of its rhetoric surely confuses and alientates at least as many students as it convinces.

FIRST, SASC tends to overstate its case for divestment. Although the Botha regime is a target ripe for caricature, SASC's frequent comparisons between South Africa and Nazi Germany are ridiculous. Until South Africa begins to round up entire Black families and villages and cart them off to gas chambers and ovens--and gets the crazy idea of trying to do the same in the rest of the world--such analogies are absurd and can only confuse those not yet among the ranks of the committed.

Second, SASC doesn't seem to be able to decide whether it supports divestment more for economic or for moral reasons. It's natural for them to equate Harvard's divestment with practical, positive change in South Africa. It would be difficult to maintain commitment to a cause without the hope of it achieving some great and just result. But when questions are raised concerning the possibility that withdrawal of Harvard's "investment" in South Africa might have only a minimal economic impact on conditions there--or perhaps even a negative one--divestment activists are quick to respond that divestment is necessary if only for moral reasons.

But economic and moral arguments are two very different rationales for divestment. One says that divestment can bring about much-desired change for the oppressed in South Africa, while the other simply asserts it to be a moral necessity. One holds out the possibility of easing the plight of Blacks in South Africa, while the other only holds out the possibility of easing the consciences of those lucky enough to be here in North America.

THE TWO are also in some sense perhaps mutually exlusive. A purely moral motivation for divestment should not be sullied by resort to its likely practical benefit. If the moral case for divestment is strong enough, opponents of apartheid should not have to make economic arguments for it as well.

Finally, even SASC's purely moral arguments for divestment are often weak and inconsistent. The activists push it on the premise that it is intrinsically immoral for Harvard to invest in a nation whose regime is based upon so fundamentally wrong a premise as that of South Africa. That may very well be so. Yet, when asked why they do not also favor and agitate for divestment from other despicable regimes--the Soviet Union, Chile, etc.--the typical response is that divestment from South Africa is more attainable and holds out greater prospect for change than divestment from other regimes.

That also may very well be true; the ability of the press to cover the turmnoil in South Africa and the ease with which Americans can identify with the racial dilemna there makes the apartheid regime easy to target. But if the reasoning behind choosing South Africa to take a symbolic stand against illiberal regimes worldwide is its convenience as a target for humanitarian outrage, than clearly divestment from South Africa itself is not the clear, specific moral imperative divestment activists make it out to be.

Harvard probably should divest from companies that do business in South Africa if for no other reason than that a clear majority of Black South Africans seem to want it to. But divestment is not the black and white issue its most ardent supporters make it out to be.

Whether one feels strongly one way or the other about divestment in general, there can be no denying that the shanties have been an abysmal failure. Without the support of the students, the shanties and their builders will never convince the administration to divest. While SASC tries to think up new ways to generate that support, it should do everyone a favor by tearing the shanties down.