alien@gcc-opus.ARPA (Alien Wells) (01/11/85)
A lot of people on the net have been (justly) condemning apartheid recently, and many of them have been following the lead of those calling for US companies to stop dealing with South Africa and for people, companies, governments, trust funds, retirement funds, universities, etc to drop any stock in any company which does business in South Africa. Here in Massachusetts a recent law was passed requiring cities to divest in these companies. Senator Kennedy (now doing his South African 'fact finding mission') is a proponent of divestiture. I was rather gratified to see the head of the largest black African tribe in South Africa bring him to task for this. You see, US corporations provide the best jobs for blacks in South Africa, and are one of the largest forces pushing the South African government for change. South African blacks WANT US corporations to stay. The question I have is why wasn't this obvious to people like Kennedy before he had his nose rubbed in it? (As I revel in the luxury of saying 'I told you so'.) Isolating South Africa from the pressure for 'change from within' that US corporations represent is not going to make things get better there, and trying to cripple the South African economy is going to hurt the people at the bottom the most (as does any recession or depression), and guess who is at the bottom in South Africa? Af course, Sen. Kennedy may agree with the people who want to cripple South Africa's economy hoping to incite a civil war where the blacks will massacre the whites ... but all that is likely to do is to make South Africa another Uganda or Angola. South Africa has a number of good things to be said about it. It has a good, stable economy. It is a solid democracy (abeit limited). The average standard of living is much higher than other parts of Africa (even the blacks are better off than in most black African countries). Apartheid is bad, it is evil, but the country stands to gain a lot more from a peaceful transition to universal democracy than a cataclysmic destruction of the entire country. Alien