HARVARD AND SOUTH AFRICA

Contents: Harvard and South Africa • Why South Africa? • Engelhard • Harvard's Response • Why Corporate Withdrawal? • Apartheid Means... • Radcliffe • The Case for Divestiture • Universities Nukes Liberation • The Corporate Role • The pamphlet says South Africa has become an issue that the Harvard community can no longer-avoid. United States corporations have invested $1.7 billion in that country, and U.S. banks have lent well over $2 billion to its white minority government; the facts show that this money in South Africa does more to support the brutal exploitation of the black majority than to end it; Harvard University, through its $350 million invested in these banks and corporations, participates in this exploitation; if Harvard University is to have any sort of moral integrity, it must do more than issue statements deploring apartheid. It must therefore cease being an investor in apartheid. The pamphlet says protests in 1978 confronted the administration with the issue of South Africa, and forced it to take some action; yet the administration's bad faith undermined even the minimal concessions it made. The pamphlet says in the fall of 1977, students formed the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee (SASC) to educate the community about Southern Africa and to protest Harvard's South 1 Africa-related investments; at that time, students put forward the minimal demands that Harvard end its most blatant form of support for apartheid by divesting itself of stocks and bonds in banks that loan money to the South African government, and that Harvard call, through shareholder resolutions, for the withdrawal of all U.S. corporations from South Africa. The pamphlet says 3200 students signed a petition supporting these demands and 76 campus organizations, including all 13 House Committees, endorsed them; educational activities continued throughout the winter and spring. The pamphlet says despite weekly informational pickets of their meetings, the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) rejected students' demands for action; instead, the ACSR recommended a lengthy case-by-case review of each of Harvard's South Africa-related investments, arguing that "progressive labor practices" could somehow outweigh the many forms of support that all corporations give the white minority regime. The pamphlet says 400 students protested the shortcomings of the ACSR report, and an angry confrontation between Third World students and members of the Corporation outside Mass Hall demonstrated that students would not accept delay and inaction by Harvard. The pamphlet says as a result of the administration's insensitivity, American Indians at Harvard, the Asian American Association, the Black Students Association, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, La Organizacion, Raza, and SASC formed the United Front, which sponsored educational activities, rallies, and demonstrations during the weeks around the Corporation decision. The pamphlet says on Monday, April 24, 1500 students gathered at Pusey Library near the Corporation building to await the decision-but the administration announced that they were delaying the decision for several days. The pamphlet says in indignation, 3500 students marched through the streets of Cambridge in a United Front-sponsored torchlight parade, and several hundred students spent that night and the next day blocking the steps of and closing University Hall to protest Harvard's failure to take any effective action. The pamphlet says the first blatant example of bad faith came only two days after the Corporation's report and the week of protest; the Corporation ignored the ACSR's recommendations to vote for shareholder resolutions calling for withdrawal of Motorola and 3M; both manufacture products for the South African police. The pamphlet says equivocation became deceit when the Corporation, one month after issuing its report, began quietly buying bonds in Manufacturers Hanover Trust and other banks who have publicly stated that they will continue to make loans to the South African government. The pamphlet says the very act of investing- in South Africa demonstrates that corporations completely subordinate moral concerns to economic ones. You don't invest in slavery and then say you are trying to "improve" it. The pamphlet says most disingenuous of all is President Bok's distortion of the position of martyred leader Steven Biko. The pamphlet says in numerous statements Biko made it known that he unequivocally supported corporate withdrawal; moreover, the two organizations he founded, the Black People's Convention and the South African Students Organization, as a matter of basic policy demand corporate withdrawal; according to Donald Woods, who was present at the trial cited by Bok, the prosecution was attempting to trap Biko into admitting publicly that he and his associates supported unconditional corporate withdrawal; under such duress, Biko obviously gave an ambiguous answer in order to save his comrades. The pamphlet says with 60% of the electricity consumption of all of Africa and about 27 million people of the continent's more' than 400 million people, South Africa has a gross national product about the size of Africa's largest economy, Nigeria's, which has somewhere between 67 and 100 million people depending on the estimate; still, South Africa manages to absorb more IMF loans than all of black Africa. The pamphlet says American corporations have $1.7 billion invested in South Africa; they equip the apartheid system with the sophisticated technology necessary for its efficiency and its survival. For instance, U.S. firms import and refine 50% of the regime's oil and provide 70% of the country's computers; the United States is South Africa's leading trading partner; U.S. corporations bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign exchange, allowing the South African regime to buy yet more manufactured goods and weapons; American businesses pay over $200 million a year in taxes directly to the South African government and only $70 million in wages to blacks in South Africa. The pamphlet says U.S. banks, led by Citicorp, Bank of America, Morgan Guaranty, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust, have lent $2.2 billion to South Africa; by making the bulk of their loans to state-owned companies, they have freed South African capital for expansion in neighboring countries such as Namibia. The pamphlet says after the shooting of 250 peaceful demonstrators at Sharpeville prompted $300 million of foreign capital to leave the country, U.S. banks intervened to prevent a depression. At the instigation of Charles Engelhard, they mobilized over $150 million in loans to replace the departed ·capital and maintain the regime's solvency. The pamphlet says economic sanctions-were vetoed in the United Nations Security Council by the United States five times during the Carter administration alone. Economic sanctions have long been demanded by the liberation movements and by the international community. As the case of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) demonstrates, international isolation has a serious effect on the ability of the racists to continue their oppression. The pamphlet says student actions have forced the universities to address the issue' of the American corporate presence in South Africa. The pamphlet says schools that have taken a strong stand against apartheid by divesting themselves of stock in companies that do business there include: Hampshire Co liege, the University of Massachusetts, Ohio University, Oregon State University, Antioch College, and the University. of Wisconsin. The pamphlet says some schools have accepted at least a partial program against apartheid. Michigan State University and Carlton College, for example, will not invest in corporations that expand their South African operations or provide strategic support to the government. The pamphlet says the campus movement has grown steadily since 294 Stanford students were arrested in a take over of the university administration building in in the spring of 1977. In the Northeast there have been major campaigns at Wellesley, Brandeis, Tufts, Dartmouth, Wesleyan, Yale, Temple, Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, Brooklyn College, SUNY Stonybrook, Amherst, Brown and Vassar, among others. The pamphlet says elsewhere in the country students at the University of Oregon, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Tennessee, the University of Wisconsin and at more than 20 campuses of the University of California, to name a few, have organized against university investment in apartheid-linked companies. The pamphlet says IBM alone controls 40-50% of the South African computer market and does one-third of its business with the government; it supplies and maintains computers for the Department of Defense, the Department of Prisons, and the Atomic Energy Board. The Department of the Interior uses two IBM machines to manage the information necessary for the efficient functioning of the passbook system. The pamphlet includes quotes by Steven Biko in The New York Times; Mike Barnicle, columnist for the Boston Globe; U.N. General Assembly Resolution 31 / 6H adopted 11/9/76; Nobel Prize Winner Chief Albert J. Luthuli, Neil Wates, Managing Director of Wates, Ltd., after visiting South Africa in 1970 and rejecting an invitation to invest in that country; Dr. Nthato Motlana, chairman of the Soweto Committee of Ten; Kenneth J. Arrow; James ·. Bryant Conant Professor of Economics and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1972; Donald Woods in the Boston Globe, 4/15/19; and John Gaetsewe, General Secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). The pamphlet discusses General Motors (GM), IBM (International Business Machines), Standard of California, Exxon, Mobil Oil, Raytheon, ITT, Caterpillar Tractor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M), Motorola, General Electric (GE), Manufacturers Hanover Trust (MHT), Honeywell, Foxboro, SASO (South African Students Organization), BPC (Black People's Convention), Harvard's paternalism, desegregating bathrooms, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.N. General Assembly, the World Council of Churches (WCC), humanitarian projects, the "Muldergate" scandal, former Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs Dick Clark, the economic boycott of South Africa, Polaroid, General Electric of Great Britain, the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), education for white, Bantu schools, single-Sex barrack, the township of Soweto, "superfluous appendages", Bantustans, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, Riotous Assemblies Act, Unlawful Organizations Act, the Terrorism Act, the migrant labor system, political repression, the Suppression of Communism Act, Texaco, Exxon, the pass system, job reservation, murder, Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, Bantu Homelands Constitution Act, the Mine and Workers Act, Yale University, Allis Chalmers, Safari I, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Nuclear Corporation, enriched uranium, atomic bombs, the Black Peoples Convention (BPC), Black Consciousness, Caltex, Standard Oil, Texaco, Ford, Chrysler, Goodyear, Firestone, National Cash Register, Honeywell, Union Carbide, Kennecott, AMAX, Phelps-Dodge, Percy Qoboza, the Sullivan Principles, tax revenues, and military spending.