The Pressure Builds

Suddenly, South Africa stopped seeming like a far-off country this week-at least to a lot of people at Harvard.

Members of seven campus political and minority groups joined together Wednesday to form the United Front, a coalition calling for the withdrawal of all United States firms from South Africa, and Harvard's divestiture of stock in those firms, if necessary as a long-range goal.

Yesterday the group sponsored a rally on the steps of Memorial Hall with more than 300 students, and numerous plainclothes policemen trying to look unobtrusive, looking on.

In between the speeches by members of the African National Congress and the Patriotic Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe, spokesmen for the front announced plans for a mass demonstration and march on Monday. That is when the Corporation is scheduled to decide on a South African investment policy.

The group has also called for a boycott of all afternoon classes on Monday, to allow the entire student body to attend the demonstration.

It now appears that there will not be a sit-in Monday if the Corporation fails to announce a decision supporting total withdrawal from South Africa-although the various groups admit that they have been discussing taking such action.

Members of the United Front have indicated that the group will wait at least until the Corporation comes out with its decision-which it may not be able to do on Monday-before going ahead with any possible sit-ins or extensive protests.

Two of the seven Corporation members will not be present at Monday's meeting, and the other five may not be able to reach a consensus on the complex and sensitive issue of Harvard's role in apartheid in a single meeting.

It took the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility over five months to formulate a position on Harvard's South African holdings, and even then it decided to advocate a company-by-company analysis because not all committee members could agree to support total withdrawal or no withdrawal at all.

Meanwhile, the collective attention of much of the University community, and even some of the national press, is focused on the Corporation, and on what it may do on Monday.

But after all, the Harvard Corporation has come to expect that sort of thing.