Disinvestment from South Africa
[3][4] Following the passage of this resolution, the UK-based Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) spearheaded the arrangements for an international conference on sanctions to be held in London in April 1964.
According to Arianna Lisson, The aim of the Conference was to work out the practicability of economic sanctions and their implications on the economies of South Africa, the UK, the U.S., and the Protectorates.
Its findings also pointed out that in order to be effective, a programme of sanctions would need the active participation of Britain and the U.S., who were also the main obstacle to the implementation of such a policy.
Instead, in collaboration with the U.S., it worked for a carefully worded appeal on the Rivonia and other political trials to try to appease Afro-Asian countries and public opinion at home and abroad; by early 1965 the issue of sanctions had lost momentum.
[citation needed] The principles required that, as a condition of doing business, the corporation ensure that all employees be treated equally regardless of race and in an integrated environment.
First, concerned stockholders submitted shareholder resolutions (which were routinely rejected due to management proxy votes), and they could affect corporate reputations.
[7] The disinvestment campaign in the United States, which had been in existence for two decades, gained a critical mass following the black political resistance to the 1983 South African constitution, a document that further solidified the system of racial segregation and discrimination.
Television audiences throughout the world were to watch almost nightly reports of massive resistance to apartheid, the growth of a democratic movement, and the savage police and military response.
Activism surged in 1984 on the wave of public interest created by the wide television coverage of resistance efforts of black South Africans.
[15] The initial Columbia divestment focused largely on bonds and financial institutions directly involved with the South African regime.
[16] It followed a year-long campaign initiated by students who in 1977 had worked together to block the appointment of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to an endowed chair at Columbia.
On 1 March 1986, the protest ended when administrators agreed that the trustees would re-evaluate their decision, a mandatory teach-in would be held, and amnesty would be granted to anyone involved in the sit-in and blockade.
[22] As a result of student pressure, by 31 October 1988 Smith College had divested all $39 million in stocks that they held in companies working in South Africa.
But the University was slow to pull its own investments out of companies doing business in South Africa, insisting that through its proxy votes, it could more effectively fight apartheid than by purging stocks from its portfolio.
[26] In contrast to the limited action undertaken by Harvard, in 1986 the University of California authorized the withdrawal of three billion dollars worth of investments from the apartheid state.
Nelson Mandela remarked that the University of California's massive divestment was particularly significant in pressuring for an end to white-minority rule in South Africa.
On 5 June 1978 the City and County of San Francisco passed legislation requiring them not to invest "in corporations and banks doing business in or with South Africa".
These local governments also exerted pressure by enacting selective purchasing policies, "whereby cities give preference in bidding on contracts for goods and services to those companies who do not do business in South Africa".
Specific measures against trade included the prohibition of the import of agricultural goods, textiles, shellfish, steel, iron, uranium, and the products of state-owned corporations.
[failed verification] The disinvestment campaign impacted South Africa only after the major Western nations, including the United States, got involved beginning in mid-1984.
The currency decline made imports more expensive, and this in turn caused inflation in South Africa to rise at a steep 12–15% per year.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Chief Minister of KwaZulu and president of the Inkatha Freedom Party, slammed sanctions, stating that "They can only harm all the people of Southern Africa.
"[35] The Members of Parliament Helen Suzman and Harry Schwarz, who opposed apartheid and were leaders of the Progressive Federal Party, also argued that disinvestment would cause further economic hardships for black people and that this would ultimately worsen the political climate for negotiations.
[39] Many conservatives opposed the disinvestment campaign, accusing its advocates of hypocrisy for not also proposing that the same sanctions be levelled on either the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China.
[40] Murray Rothbard, a libertarian economist, also opposed this policy, asserting that the most direct adverse impact of the boycott would be felt by the black workers in that country, and that the best way to remedy the problem of apartheid was by promoting trade and the growth of free market capitalism in South Africa.
[41] Ronald Reagan, who was the U.S. President during the time the disinvestment movement was at its peak, also opposed it, instead favouring a policy of "constructive engagement" with the Pretoria government.
