AMAX: Harvard's Illegal Company

It should come as a surprise to no one that a Harvard portfolio company has played a key role in bolstering South Africa's illegal presence in Namibia. According to its most recently published reports, Harvard owns more than $2.5 million worth of shares in AMAX, Inc., the U.S. mining multinational. AMAX, in turn, owns one-third of Tsumeb Corporation, the copper mining company that employs more African labor in Namibia than any other firm. In a recent annual report, AMAX bragged that Tsumeb has finally trained a few of its 5000 African workers to fill such semi-skilled posts as truck drivers and painters. A recently-uncovered report by South Africa's Anglo-American Corporation--itself a model of corporate irresponsibility--shows that Tsumeb wages are among the lowest paid to black miners in Southern Africa.

A 1971 U.S.-backed International Court of Justice opinion made it illegal for the corporations of U.N. member nations to operate in South Africa. This legal development evidently did not bother the financial wizards on Boston's Federal Street who invest Harvard's money. Harvard did not buy its millions in AMAX stock until after the international court had declared the firm's Namibian operations illegal.

Harvard's standard justification for shareholding policies that allow corporations to lend support to white supremacy in Southern Africa does not apply in the AMAX case. Harvard gains solace from rationalizing that Africa operations represent a minute portion of their overall worldwide corporate involvements. Unfortunately, Tsumeb contributed an average of 7 per cent to AMAX's total profits during the 10-year period ending in 1972. Since its formation after World War II, Tsumeb has contributed more than $150 million in tax revenues to South Africa's colonial administration in Namibia.

Last year, at an open hearing in front of the University's Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, a Harvard student spoke about AMAX's Namibian operations and asked that Harvard, following international law, sponsor an AMAX shareholder resolution requiring the company to withdraw from Namibia. In the great tradition of Harvard's free market of ideas, the committee politely thanked him for the suggestion, but seems never to have given it a moment's consideration.