JUNE 30, 1985 - VOLUME 6 - NUMBER 8
C O R P O R A T E C O L L U S I O N : U N D E R M I N I N G D I V E S T M E N T
JUNE 30, 1985 - VOLUME 6 - NUMBER 8
Profiting from ApartheidAn interview with Desmond TutuAllan Nairn traveled to South Africa for the Multinational Monitor to talk with Bishop Tutu about the divestment campaign, apartheid and the implications of multinational involvement in South Africa. |
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Multinational Monitor: Why is divestment important to black South Africans? Desmond Tutu: It is important as part of the strategy for peaceful change. Nobody knows of too many instances where people have given up power voluntarily. You give up power either because you Fear violence or you have been subjected to some pressure or other or, as very seldom happens, you come to realize that sharing power is perhaps the best way of ensuring that you continue to have some power. The third hardly ever happens. And so, since we do not have the power of the ballot box which is another way of bringing about change, we have only two options, the option of' the armed struggle or the option of' getting pressure exerted by the international corporations in conjunction with internal pressure. Monitor: How much impact would U.S. disinvestment have? Tutu: Though your South African investment is not perhaps a very large part of your balance sheet in the United States, what has always amazed me is the tenacity with which people have clung to something that seems to be such a great embarrassment. The most important thing would obviously be the psychological effect - what you would be saying, the moral message that you'd be giving. My own concern is obviously not as an economist - I don't know anything about economics - it is the whole area of the morality of the involvement of companies in a system such as the one in which our people are victims. Monitor: Do you think the multinationals here favor the principle of majority rule, of one person one vote? Tutu: If they do, they have not been too vocal about it at all. I am myself distressed at how quiet they have been in the face of blatant injustices perpetrated by the South African government. Monitor: What has their political role been as far as you can tell? Tutu: It has been a negative one so far as I can tell. It has been to buttress apartheid. They may have been engaging in quiet diplomacy as your president wants to call it, but quiet diplomacy in many ways is useless for the victim because you don't know when it has taken place. Nothing significant has happened. Either the diplomacy has been a dismal failure or if has not been tried at all. We can't tell. We can only see what appears to be a collaboration with an evil system and that I'm afraid has been their role. They may say they have helped to bring about significant improvements on the part of black workers and employees. Perhaps that is true. But what is that more than saying that these corporations have suddenly awakened to the fact that they ought to be good employers even to blacks and extend to blacks what they have been making available to whites. Therefore I don't think that they must be patted incessantly on their backs. Even when you have had substantial improvements, they are improvements that are not ways of changing apartheid. They are things that can be accommodated within apartheid. That is why the government has not worried about the Sullivan principles because they don't even make a dent in the oppressive structures of apartheid. They merely ameliorate. They make apartheid slightly more comfortable. Monitor: I interviewed the executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce here and he said he was against majority rule. He was against the principle of one man one vote. Tutu: They don't want to see power transferred to the people because they have never had it so good. They are benefiting from very considerable black suffering. It is the height of hypocrisy on their part to say when they pull out the first people to suffer will be the blacks, when all along they have had no real concern. Even now they have no qualms, the squatters in Capetown have been treated abominably. Not a single one of these people has so far as I know uttered a squeak. They have not said a thing about the policy of forced population removals and then they have the cheek to talk about possible future black suffering. No, I am not surprised. They benefit from injustice, and if injustice is removed they fear the cost of their operation will be increased and they will have to pay people better wages. I mean, why did that tragedy occur in Bhopal, India? It must be in part that the safety measures were far lower than would have been the case in the United States. At least they have been honest with you. They always give us the baloney of being here for our benefit which is rubbish. When they say `if we pull out you will suffer' the correlative is that we are here for your benefit, which is a lie. At least they ought to have the honesty to say we are here because the purpose of free enterprise is that we make profits.' At least you would respect them for their honesty. At least they have been honest with you and said they wouldn't want one man one vote. Monitor: What are the specific aspects of the apartheid system that have been beneficial to multinationals'? Tutu: The effect of cheap labor is a very important consideration in terms of your profits. You pay someone as if he didn't have a family and you have no responsibility to provide a social infrastructure that will take in his family as well. When you know too that they are easily sackable you are not likely to be over concerned about the conditions. Yes, they have improved those conditions but it is in effect an indictment of them. That didn't happen just out of the goodness of their hearts. It happened because the disinvestment campaign was heating up in the United States and they were compelled to do something. That is when the Sullivan principles came, they didn't just happen, these guys didn't say we know we have a responsibility to our workers. It was because of the pressure and they were trying to justify why they were here. But I still think they need to look at the morality of their presence in South Africa. Monitor: What now are you calling on American companies to do? Tutu: Well I've already said that they can try to say to the government that they want to remain here provided the influx control laws, the pass laws and migrant labor are phased out and this must happen within a specific time frame, the latest is two years hence. If two years hence, in 1987, we do not see a significant change in the linchpins of apartheid I will explicity call for the removal of the firms who are not in effect working for the changing of the system. I have not done so yet, and I have not called specifically for economic sanctions, in part because of the nature of our legislation. I'm looking for a peaceful strategy and that for me is a peaceful strategy. Monitor: What about universities, municipalities and pension funds that hold stocks in companies doing business in South Africa, should they divest themselves? Tutu: I think that they have to make up their own minds. At the present time I have thought that it was not politic for me to call specifically for disinvestment but to speak about pressure and to make them aware of the moral dimension of the involvement in South Africa. I want pressure that is going to be effective pressure to move the South African government to the conference table. And, as I say, within 18 to 24 months I am actually agreeing to be specific and call for economic sanctions against this system. Monitor: But it's not politic for you now given South African law, which defines calling for divestment as an act of treason, a capital crime? Tutu: Yes. I'm saying to those who operate here that we are offering you a chance to exert pressure if you want to remain in this country with any moral justification.
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