African Activist Archive

Leaflet passed out at a protest outside and a sit-in inside at the IBM building in Chicago on May 22, 1986 to demand that IBM stop doing business in South Africa and that the University of Chicago divest from IBM and other companies that do business there. The leaflet says IBM had $450 million worth of sales in South Africa last year, much of it to the South African government. IBM has equipped numerous apartheid-enforcing agencies and military branches of the government. It has made possible the computerization of the population registration system, the defense forces' computerized command and control system, and the automation of the supply of ammunition and arms to troops in illegally-occupied Namibia. IBM also is crucial to South Africa's burgeoning arms industry. The leaflet says IBM admits that it has no control over how its products exported to South Afrca are used and that it has sold equipment manufactured overseas to South African governmental agencies that are embargoed under U.S. law. The leaflet says IBM is the largest holding in the University of Chicago's portfolio and that IBM Chairman John R. Opel is on the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago.

African Activist Archive

How IBM supports Apartheid

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Coverage Africa

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