Divestment and Fighting Apartheid

I JUST DON'T understand it. I've been at Harvard for two years. I'm a typical Massachusetts-bred liberal, but I just can't get myself to froth at the mouth over divestiture.

It's not that I don't care. Like most citizens--not just liberals, but those across the entire political spectrum--I am deeply concerned about the plight of Blacks in South Africa. And I guess that, when asked, I probably even support Harvard's divestiture from all companies doing business in that nation.

My problem with this whole issue is that I can't-understand the hysterical preoccupation with South Africa, and divestiture of other moral issues. South Africa has no monopoly on injustice in the world, although its blaram racism would make it appear so. Rather, the globe is jammed with left-wing, right-wing ambidexuous governments then citizens. And loads of American companies make a buck or two from most of them.

Further, it seems as though students too often confuse protest for divestiture with protest against apartheid. They are not the same issue. Divestiture is only one of several valid methods of opposing apartheid, but hardly the best. The victory is not won when Harvard divests or when every university, city town and corporation in the world divests from South Africa. The victory is only won when apartheid has been crushed. And divestiture, by itself, will never bring an end to a system so firmly entrenched as apartheid. Only internal revolution can burn apartheid to the ground, and economic pressure is just one way of striking the match.

Generally, however, we don't put such economic pressure on evil of divesting from all business in all objectionable geographical areas of the world, because that would be following moral outrage to its illogical conclusion. We do not boycott the American farmer because he sells wheat to the Soviet Union. We did not divest from companies that did business in the American South in the 1920s, when racism was institutionalized on a savage scale. And more realistically, we do not divest from companies doing business in Haiti. Chile. H Salvador, or a host of other nations, each with supported system that runs counter to our moral sensibilities.

No, we support, divestiture only from South Africa for three reasons, two of which appear a bit shaky. First and foremost-and most compelling are the matter's moral dimensions. The issue seems (pardon the expression) black and white. Even a neoconservative can see that apartheid is bad and therefore, divestiture is good.

But the second reason we support divestiture is that it's easy. Heck, even an insulated college kid like me can support corporate divestiture of stocks I don't own and don't really care about. If supporters of divestiture are really serious about it, let's see a boycott of goods made by companies doing business in South Africa. Probably in will be more difficult for John Q. Liberal to do without a multitude of everyday goods, things like oil, automobiles and chemicals from virtually every major manufacturer of those goods.

The third and most common season for support of divestiture, of course, is that it's child. Divestiture from Hain or the USSR just hasn't caught on vel, but you can be a hit at any Cambridge cocktail party by dropping a few pithy lines about your recent exploits in arriving to force Bok and Harvard to quit South Mica.

So QUESTION here is not "Why divest?" that question has been answered again and again, usually very eloquently. The real question is "Why divest only?" Supporters of divestiture from South Africa to he morally consistent should work for other ways to overthrow apartheid such as loly bying and boycotting goods made by companies doing business there while at the same time demonstrating dissents with crud practices in all unjust parts of the world (including here in the United States). I do not pretend that, in their current inconsistency supporters of divestiture are therefore wrong because they probably are not But only when they convince me that they are when they convince me that they are truly sincere serious and effective will joint them. And I suspect that others will too.