Code for a Cause
Agreement has been reached by 119 U.S. corporations doing business in South Africa to use their influence for significant political change, actively seeking an end to the racism of the government. The agreement was announced by the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, whose code of business practices for Americans in South Africa already had been implemented by these and a number of other American corporations.
The agreement comes at a crucial moment, coinciding with indications that the government of South Africa may be ready to open talks with the black majority on sharing political power. Under the agreement reached by the U.S. companies, four principles would be added to the code now being observed, extending the commitment of the firms beyond the workplace to seek fundamental social and political change--including agreement to “support the ending of all apartheid laws.”
Altogether, American corporations in South Africa employ only about 66,000 out of a total of6 million workers, but they have a significance beyond their numbers. The American companies represent major industries and advanced technologies, segments of the economy essential to the health of the South African nation. Furthermore, the stand of the U.S. corporations has already been helpful in supporting pressure from South African businesses for reform of the racist structure of the society, a structure that has been handicapping economic development just as it has been denying justice to the vast majority of the people.
Sullivan is pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in North Philadelphia. He is a black. As a member of the board of directors of General Motors, he first proposed that General Motors pull out of South Africa to protest apartheid. Then he conceived the principles that have enabled many of the U.S. corporations to be an influence for change while assuring justice in the workplace for all, regardless of race.
The regression in South Africa in recent years, particularly the wholesale detention of those seeking through peaceful means to oppose apartheid, has increased skepticism about all reform efforts there, including the Sullivan code. Those who want all foreign investments withdrawn believe that only their radical remedy will win change. That may prove to be the case. But the evidence at present suggests that those committed to peaceful change through the use of all available leverage, including the Sullivan code, are having an effect, are winning concessions. They may even take credit for finally winning from the Reagan Administration a more forceful and energetic commitment after four years of “constructive engagement” that succeeded largely in encouraging the belief in Pretoria that Washington really didn’t care.
This latest refinement of the Sullivan code, like other improvements that he has proposed over the last eight years, deserves praise and encouragement and time to be tested. The impatience of critics should be focused on the American firms that have not accepted the principles proposed by Sullivan and have not used their economic power to encourage change.
There have been mixed signals coming from Pretoria in recent days. South African President Pieter W. Botha reacted with anger to President Reagan’s recent condemnation of apartheid. Hearing Botha call South Africa’s racist policies “the path of righteousness,” one had to acknowledge that there may be no way to assure peaceful change, although change there certainly will be.
Contrasting with that renewal of intransigence, however, were reports at Christmastime that the ruling National Party was having second thoughts about its 24-year-old effort to suppress the African National Congress, the leading organization of blacks. There have been unconfirmed reports of plans for a meeting in nearby Zambia in the days ahead between National Party and African National Congress officials. The meeting might be followed by the release from prison of leading black nationalists--including Nelson Mandela, the patriarch of black nationalism, sentenced in 1964 to life imprisonment. That could set in motion irreversible forces that could carry South Africa forward to construction of a nation in which all people share political power and apartheid is for all time abandoned.
In that context the American corporations have an ever more influential role to play in the cause of justice that is inextricably linked with their investments in a racist state.
