ACOA PROTESTS WILKENS' STATEMENT

The press release says the American Committee on Africa is appalled to learn that NAACP director Roy Wilkens has chosen Johannesburg as a platform from which to defend the role of U.S. business in that segregated police state. The press release says Mr. Wilkens' statement is a betrayal of the expanding struggle of the African people for freedom and self-determination; it is made in the face of growing opposition in the United States to continued government and private collaboration with the racist minority regimes of southern Africa; it can only serve to give aid and comfort to businesses needing to justify their continued exploitation of the oppressed African majority; it will give a tremendous boost to the South African government, which has been desperately seeking conciliatory blacks to improve its world image; it flies in the face of the stated NAACP position on South Africa, and undercuts the policies of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity. The press release says it is hard to believe that an American civil rights leader could have stated: "I am not advocating the violating of laws," in South Africa where two and a half thousand African men and women are imprisoned daily because they cannot avoid breaking the pass laws; South African laws have torn a million people from their homes to enforce segregation. The press release says U.S. finance and business give powerful support to the white government; this was clear a decade ago after the massacre at Sharpeville when capital was leaving South Africa and the economy was threatened with collapse; a $40 million credit from U.S. banks turned the tide and saved the South African economy; the South African government needs U.S. knowhow and U.S. capital and therefore it permits U.S. businesses to employ Africans under conditions conforming to its apartheid laws; U.S. business is in South Africa because cheap labor and great natural resources provide the highest profit returns in the world; the New York Times report closes with a fallacy that South Africa has come a long way, as if outside contact and involvement have meant better - if not yet good - conditions inside South Africa; while wages for some have increased, the gap between white and black wages has actually widened; the past decade of increasing U.S. involvement has coincided with the destruction of the last representation of nonwhites in government and the prohibition of multiracial parties; the white government has banned African political parties and press and defined "terrorism" to include advocacy of disengagement (economic withdrawal or boycott). Until the black majority of South Africa wins basic human and political rights, they will remain prey to exploitation, poverty, and persecution regardless of the ownership; the fact is that U.S. corporations, by accepting and strengthening the apartheid system, are helping postpone the day of majority rule. The press release discusses IBM (International Business Machines), GM (General Motors), political trials, punishments, and the OAU. The cover letter discusses the Committee of Concerned Blacks.