Bok's Statement on South Africa

Following is the complete text of President Bok's statement to the Harvard community on South Africa:

I am pleased to share with the Harvard community the enclosed Progress Report just submitted to the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. That report describes what the University has done during recent months with respect to its investments in American companies doing a small part of their business in South Africa [See references to report in main stories, Page One]

Let me preface the report with a few words about Harvard's response to South Africa and apartheid. Two important values are fundamental to a modern university: intellectual freedom and individual dignity. A system of government that separates people on the basis of color, strips members of one race of their freedom and basic rights, and carries out these indignities through criminal law and police action is fundamentally inconsistent with these values. South African apartheid is such a system. South Africa's policies of racial discrimination are built into the constitution and laws and enforced through the civil and criminal courts. Blacks are denied citizenship, educational and economic opportunity, personal mobility, due process of law, and most civil rights and liberties. For these reasons, all of us unequivocally condemn apartheid.

In light of these convictions, Harvard has acted along two principal lines.

First, Harvard as an investor opposes apartheid through its activities in the management of its securities and other investments. For reasons clearly stated on many occasions, the University does not believe in divesting its shares in all American companies doing business in South Africa. But Harvard neither owns nor will own any shares in companies doing the majority of their business in South Africa, nor will it hold any debt securities in banks that loan to the South African government. On two occasions Harvard has divested such debt securities. Harvard will also vote its shares and seek other means of persuasion to induce companies in its portfolio to implement each of the following anti-apartheid principles:

--elimination of all racial segregation in work facilities

--equal and fair employment practices for all employees, including permission for black and other non-white workers to bargain collectively on matters relating to wages and conditions of employment.

--equal pay for equal work, with an adequate minimum wage

--development of training programs to prepare substantial numbers of blacks and other non-whites for supervisory, administrative, clerical, and technical jobs.

--hiring of blacks and other nonwhites in management and supervisory positions

--improvements in the quality of employees' lives outside the workplace in such areas as housing, education, and community development

Last year Harvard initiated dialogues with nineteen companies to probe the extent of their active compliance with these basic anti-apartheid principles. The outcome of these dialogues, including those described in the accompanying Progress Report, is as follows. Seven companies initiated concrete steps to demonstrate compliance with the above mentioned principles. Four other companies provided the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR) enough information on their existing activities to satisfy the concerns that had led the CCSR to initiate the dialogue. Communications with three companies are still in progress, and Harvard disposed of the stock of four other companies in the normal course of business while communications were still going on. Finally, Harvard divested the shares of one company because persistent efforts to secure information concerning the firm's activities proved unavailing, and there seemed to be no reasonable prospect that the management would supply evidence in the foreseeable future to demonstrate satisfactory progress. Harvard should soon have enough information to conclude whether any of the three companies with which dialogue is still in progress are so unresponsive to our efforts and show such slight prospects of improvement as to warrant similar action.

This year, as noted in the Progress Report, Harvard has also written to each company in its portfolio that is doing business in South Africa urging management to express active opposition to South Africa's influx control laws--the cornerstone of apartheid--and to undertake action to try to assure that black employees' families will be allowed to live with them near their places of work. In addition, the University has begun to seek information on portfolio companies' sales to the South African government, with special emphasis on sales to the police, military, and other agencies directly enforcing apartheid.

Harvard has likewise joined with fifteen other universities and colleges in urging the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa to mount active and sustained opposition to the influx control laws integral to the maintenance of apartheid.

In addition to its actions as a shareholder, Harvard continues to make special efforts as an institution of learning to provide educational opportunities to South African blacks. For the past four years Harvard has offered full scholarships and travel grants to nonwhite South Africans for a year of graduate or professional study in a variety of fields, including law, business, health, and education. Next year, we expect to offer such assistance to five such students, and others are likely to study at Harvard under separate auspices or different programs. Over the years, I am aware of no other American university that has educated as many nonwhite South Africans. It is our hope that these efforts will help in developing leaders who will play a significant role in furthering the goals of black people and promoting their welfare in South Africa.

In pursuit of the same ends, I have served since its inception as chairman of the National Council of the South African Education Program (SAEP) which brings each year 80-90 nonwhite South Africans to begin studying in the United States. The scholarship recipients and their fields of study are determined by a committee in South Africa chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu. Almost 225 such students are currently enrolled in American universities under the SAEP program. Through our efforts, approximately six million dollars are being raised annually for this purpose from U.S. corporations, universities, and the federal government.

Finally, Harvard and SAEP are currently seeking the advice of people in South Africa opposed to apartheid to explore other ways by which to help in fields of critical importance to the welfare of black South Africans. Among the alternatives under consideration are efforts to assist black unions in the use of mediation and arbitration, opportunities to assist in teacher training or curriculum development, possibilities for improving medical education, and methods for helping integrated private schools in South Africa.

Almost ninety years ago, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a prophetic dissent to the Supreme Court decision in Plessy V. Ferguson, upholding state-imposed segregation in the United States Harlan condemned mandated segregation as "inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by everyone in the United States....The destinies of the races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be placed under the sanction of law." The spirit of Harlan's dissent underlies our commitment as a university to oppose discrimination and exploitation based on race and to express that opposition in ways appropriate to an educational institution.

The enclosed report helps document our recent activities toward that end. We recognize that Harvard cannot claim with certainty that its efforts have "caused" the improvement made by various of our portfolio companies to comply with the ethical standards we have supported. But our voice has been clearly heard and presumably played a part. The one divestment earlier represents a failure in our efforts at persuasion but reinforces our stated commitment to abandon situations where we see no hope of bringing about positive improvements. Through these efforts as a shareholder and as an educational institution, we will continue to do what we can in a positive way to contribute to the welfare of nonwhites in South Africa in their struggle toward freedom and self-determination.