Missing the Point

THE PROBLEM OF South Africa and its racist apartheid regime has been redefined on this campus and elsewhere as the problem of divestment. However, the South African issue is not "Should Harvard Divest?" or even President Bok and the Corporation's stance on divestment. The issue in South Africa is the same as it's been since the country adopted a set of laws codifying racism. The issue in South Africa is capitalist profits.

It is the profit made from Black miners and factory workers which has allowed apartheid to flourish. It is profit which is made without any concern for moral implications of the gains. And it is profit--not, as President Bok would have people believe, the nature of the University in society--which is at stake.

The message was stated clearly in Bok's October I regurgitation of past open letters. "I do believe that the tactics of divestment will not succeed and that they would cost the university money." For those who missed the point, it was something akin to "sure, apartheid is evil, but it is profitable as well."

With these simple facts in mind, the question of divestment becomes moot. Not because divestment will or will not work, but because it will not occur until it is no longer profitable to conduct business in South Africa. That will happen when Black workers in South Africa rise in revolt and crush the apartheid state.

Yet members of the so-called liberal-left persist in their attempts to ask, demand, cajole, and beg the University to "take a moral stance" or "do the right thing" and divest from companies doing business in South Africa. They forget that America has never seen anything wrong or immoral in making an easy buck.

But supposing Harvard does, miraculously, follow the advice of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) and divests. Would such an act change anything in South Africa? Did the gestures made by municipalities like Cambridge and Boston or by the University of Michigan change anything in South Africa? No, In fact, those who support divestment, if pressed, admit that Harvard, acting alone, cannot change anything in South Africa.

But liberal divestment schemers have contrived a scenario in which Harvard is key. It goes something like this: the ACSR advises the Corporation to divest: the Corporation, feeling morally compelled to wash its hands of apartheid blood, does so; other universities, recognizing Harvard's supreme importance in the grand scheme of capitalism, follow suit, as do several state and local government; then, of course, the U.S. itself divests; the businesses in South Africa crumble, breaking the chains binding South African workers, and apartheid is buried in the flames of revolution.

SUCH A SCHEME is utopian at best and liberal reformism at its worst. Divestment misses the point. What will happen when these cumulative divestments do (in a hypothetical world) take place? Will the money invested in South Africa go into companies that oppress workers in Chile of the Dominican Republic or here at home?

It is the failure to recognize South Africa as an extreme case in a morally bankrupt system that makes proponents of the divestment "movement" only so many loud proclaims of liberal guilt. After all, it is easy to be liberal when you are not poor, oppressed and starving and you know that your actions will have no real effect on your own comfortable situation.

It is much more difficult to acknowledge that the ties between Harvard and South Africa are those of class, that the same corporate investors remaining inactive on issues of oppression in South Africa remain silent on issues of worker oppression at home. Ford Motor Company has factories in Detroit as well as South Africa.

Divestment is useful only because it serves to make people aware of the futility of attempts at reforming capitalism. President Bok's intransigence on the issue helps to emphasize which side he, and others like him, have chosen. Students Nov must also choose a side.

Those who are concerned about apartheid repression should ask themselves not, "Do I want Harvard to divest?" but, rather, "Have I myself divested from the system which allows apartheid to exist?"

Then, the next step would be to ask "what can I do to end capitalist oppression worldwide?" Taking advantage of the relatively unrestricted ability to organize and speak freely in this country is a start. Mass student protest, in solidarity with South African students and workers, and labor action like hot-cargoing all goods going to South Africa are others. These are realistic, concrete acts that students can initiate.

Rather than spending one or two weeks protesting Harvard's limited, but significant role in capitalist oppression, students who care about the future of this world should exercise their rights to organize year round. If you hate racism, it should not be too difficult to recognize that apartheid is a symptom of a sick capitalist system, and you'll fight to end capitalist oppression worldwide.

These might seem like radical ideas, and given the conservative drift of this and other universities it may be. Also for Harvard students, who may have the luck of inheriting a system that allows apartheid to flourish, these acts are probably out of their range of interests.

It has taken me a while to come to this point. But I can recall my freshman year, when I tasted for eight days to protest Harvard's investments in South Africa.

I lost about 10 pounds. That was the only change.