The Time Has Come Today

THE HARVARD CORPORATION meets today to decide its policy on the more than 60 portfolio companies which have operations in South Africa. All socially responsible members of the University community should join in the United Front-sponsored demonstration in front of the Corporation's headquarters this afternoon to protest Harvard's financial complicity in the maintenance of the apartheid regime's systematic repression of the social, political and economic rights of non-whites in South Africa.

The issue is less complicated than some members of the Harvard Corporation would make it seem. The University has consumed more than five months in a spate of correspondence, largely cosmetic open hearings, reports and committee meetings. These actions have repeatedly brought forth the same basic set of facts to the Corporation. The University's indecisiveness while hundreds of South African blacks face arbitrary imprisonment or even death by starvation demonstrates that the Corporation is either seriously, if honestly, misguided, or is engaged in a censurable policy of delay and obfuscation.

Those closest to the South African situation--the black leaders and political organizations in the country itself--have called upon U.S. corporations to withdraw their operations from South Africa. These concerned parties, along with international and national organizations like the United Nations General Assembly and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, which American multinational investments offer to the entrenched white South African minority. The time for timidity, for kid glove "sensibility," passed.

THE CORPORATION MUST now demonstrate, once and for all, its willingness to use the financial and institutional clout of the University in the service of social justice. In keeping with the United Front's minimum demands, Harvard should sell all stocks and bonds in U.S. banks which have kept the apartheid regime and its economy afloat through loans to the South African government. It must support, and where necessary sponsor, shareholder resolutions calling upon companies to withdraw from South Africa. Furthermore, Harvard must be prepared to employ divestiture as a subsequent action should companies refuse to respond to shareholder pressure. Finally, the University should issue a clear public statement of its policies regarding U.S. companies still operating in South Africa.

No University governing group can completely disregard the will of the individuals that University purportedly serves. Now is the time to make our voices heard.