Not a Simple Moral Equation

Marking the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassinated Jepson Jackson will speak to Harvard students today at a rally protesting apartheid. Our moral opposition to apartheid certainly to must be reaffirmed in the wage of the bloodshed in South Africa of recent weeks. Yet, this rally bills itself as anti-apartheid and pick drives are thereby intimating that opposition is apartheid requires one to advocate divestiture. The issue of divestiture cannot be reduced to such simple moral equation.

Divestiture's avowed purpose is to eliminate apartheid--a most unrealistic expectation given that direct U.S. what little leverage it has over the South African government. While divestiture would not affect apartheid, it would mean the end of American companies improving working conditions' and education facilities, as well as increasing non-white unemployment. Thus, divestiture hurts the very people it claims to help: South Africa's non-whites.

Under its voluntary set of ethics codes (dubbed the Sullivan Principles after their founder the Reverend Leon Sullivan), American companies operating in South Africa have been at the forefront of promoting economy and social change, as well as improving labor conditions for South Africans non-whites.

By 1984, all 128 signatory companies (which employ 80 percent of non whites working for American companies) had fully desegregated their facilities. All signatories have reported paying equal wages for equal work since 1980. As a result, the Black white wage gap has been narrowed considerable in these firms. A 1982 survey of multinational and South African companies revealed that signatory companies have cut the wage differential in unskilled jobs in half.

It is important to note that the continuance of wage different to, especially in managerial and supervisors jobs, partly reflects the differences in Black and white education. Thus, the wage gap will be further narrowed as signatories continue to expand their training programs at all jobs will level for non whites.

Moreover, in 1982 these companies spent 8 million rand on housing, welfare and recreation programs and 11 million rand on education programs for non-whites not employed by the companies. Nearly 120 American companies raised $6 million to build South Africa's only Black private school, Peace school in addition, these companies continue to finance the running of the school, paying the student's tuition.

The Black journalist Percy Qoboza, former editor of Two World, a Black Consciousness organ which was banned it 1977, called Pace "the sort of freedom of education that can give Blacks their rightful place in South African society."

American companies operating under the Sullivan Code have also pressured the South African government into Labor reforms. The government's 1979 Wiehahn Commission on Labor Legislation recommended the breakdown of apartheid in the work place because ethical codes like the Sullivan Principles meant that "current practice is no longer in line with legislation." As a result, this could "only create an embarassing situation for South Africa."

Perhaps the most important contribution of the multinational corporations in their strengthening of Black Labor power General Motors and Kellogg were the first companies to recognize Black trade unions. Ford was the first company to permit full-time Black shop stewards. Even more importantly, American companies such as Ford and Kellogg have deliberately undermined government control over Black trade union activity by negotiating with unregistered unions and negotiating outside the government-controlled Industrial Councils.

A final way in which American companies are able to further change in South Africa is by their influence on South African firms. A spokesman for the South African company Barlow-Rand attributed his companies policy of desegregated work places to the impetus provided by the Sullivan Code. Union-Carbide persuaded a South African partner to back down on its refusal to recognize a Black union until the union joined an Industrial Council. In addition, the educational and social programs undertaken by American firms have inspired similar efforts on the part of South African companies who fear losing the competive edge.

Yet, the proponents of divestiture, even if they admit the good that American companies are doing in South Africa, claim that divestiture would hardly qualify as a moral statement against apartheid. But the consequences of divestiture would hardly qualify as a moral victors increase in non white unemployment and an end to the effort of American companies to improve the education, health and welfare of South Africa's non whites.

As Alan Paton, the outspoken liberal critic of apartheid recently remarked, "I will never give any support to any campaign that will put men out of jobs not even if they promised me that it would bring Chernenko down Or Reagan Or P.W. Botha."

Chief Gatsha Butheleza, a former lieutenant of the African National Congress and leader of the Black political movement Inkatha, has called American investment in South Africa morally imperative "Anything geared towards the weakening of the economy muscle of Blacks will have the effect of retarding their liberation struggle."

Unconvinced by these arguments, Jesse Jackson has called for Harvard to cut its ties to South Africa, claiming that "it must put people ahead of profit." Yet, in fact, it is Jackson and other proponents of divestiture who willfully ignore the people, in this case the Black industrial workers of South Africa.

A 1984 survey of 551 Black industrial workers found that 25 percent opposed divestiture on the grounds that it would harm Blacks. (Critics of this survey have pointed out that the public advocacy of divestiture is a punishable offense in South Africa. Yet, the same survey revealed a large percentage of workers who pronounce themselves ready to strike--also a punishable offense.) By discounting the sentiments of Black South Africans, supporters of divestiture only highlight the fact that divestiture is an easy moral cause for those who do not suffer its consequences.

At best, divestiture exemplifies the moral isolationism which American liberals have been practicing since Vietnam condemning others to misery for the sake of keeping there own hands clean. At worst, divestiture represents veiled support for violent resolution in South Africa, some of its proponents clearly hope that divestiture will depress the South African economy sufficiently to create a climate for revolution.

Groups such as the Institute for Policy Studies and the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee at Harvard explicitly link their calls for divestiture with support for the African National Congress. Today's rally at Harvard features the Director of International Relations of that Marxist-Leninist guerilla movement.

Over the years the banned South African Communist Party has become the dominant voice within the African National Congress, with the result that the body is, for all practical purposes, controlled by Moscow. In 1976, a group calling itself the African National Congress of South Africa broke off from the original ANC, claiming that South African Communist Party influence had "tied the ANC o the ideological position of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in World Affairs and has abandoned the pattern of non alignment to which the ANC has subscribed since the 1950s."

Support for the ANC reveals an inhuman disregard for the bloodbath that would attend any revolution in South Africa. Moreover, as history demonstrates, Marxist revolutions certainly produce totalitarian one-party dictatorships. Liberals who are sanguine about the consequences of Marxits revolutions should look at the human right relation of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe (where Mugabe's Morth Korean-trained Fifth Brigade has killed several thousand Ndebele supporters of Nkomo before they blithely condemn South Africans Black to a similar fate.

Surely, Black South Africans have suffered enough oppression While the prospects for peaceful democratic change in South Africa look particularly grim in the aftermath of recent violence there it is necessary to remember Steve Biko's word. "Even if the prospects for peaceful change are extremely slim, they are worth investigating."

Lars T Waldorf, a senior in Dunster House, is former editor in chief of The Harvard Salient.