Black Activists Ask U.S. Firms Operating in South Africa to Ignore Apartheid Laws

American companies doing business in South Africa are being asked to ignore the laws enforcing apartheid and to embark on what would amount to an unprecedented campaign of corporate civil disobedience.

The American Chamber of Commerce has sent its 300 members a list of 20 proposals drawn up by black activists that would put business in the front line of the anti-apartheid struggle.

Frank Lubke, the chamber president, said Wednesday that the American business group has not yet adopted the proposals, which have stirred considerable controversy here, but believes that its members will want to consider them seriously in developing their strategies to confront apartheid.

The proposals were drafted at the chamber’s request by the Get Ahead Foundation, a private black organization whose directors include Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate. They directly challenge the Pretoria government’s apartheid policies on housing, education, employment, medical care and business by calling on companies to ignore laws and government regulations in order “to ease the life of (their) black employees.”

Anniversary Meetings Banned

The government, meanwhile, outlawed all meetings marking the tenth anniversary of nationwide riots that broke out in Soweto, the sprawling black satellite city outside Johannesburg, on June 16, 1976, and claimed at least 575 lives over a year.

The Soweto anniversary has been observed by blacks each year since 1976 and has frequently brought new clashes with police. This year, a general strike, school boycott and other protests are planned for June 16.

The government order, which went into immediate effect and remains in force until the end of June, was denounced by anti-apartheid groups, labor unions and others as “provocative” and certain to bring new confrontations between black youths and the police.

Security Bills Stalled

The government also suffered a serious political setback Wednesday evening when the majority parties in the Asian and Colored (mixed-race) houses of the three-chamber Parliament agreed to send sweeping new security legislation back to committee for further discussion.

One law would allow the minister of law and order to designate any district an “unrest area” and then permit the police to take whatever action they believe necessary to restore order. A second law would permit police to detain for as long as six months anyone declared by a senior police officer to be involved in the continuing civil strife or likely to become involved.

To win passage of the legislation, the government now will be forced either to work out compromises with the Asian and Colored leaders or push the laws through the President’s Council where the ruling National Party has a majority.

Called Civil Disobedience

The series of proposals that American companies boldly challenge the apartheid system of racial separation and minority white rule wherever they encounter it were characterized by commentators here on their publication Wednesday as a campaign of civil disobedience.

The companies are urged to “encourage the slow movement of blacks” into white residential areas in defiance of neighborhood segregation laws; to help establish new black settlements, with or without government permission, in order to ease overcrowding in the present black ghetto townships; to refuse to register black workers under “influx control” laws that restrict the right of blacks to live and work outside tribal homelands, and to help migrant workers to move to urban areas with their families if they wish.

Other proposals in the document include efforts to integrate private and eventually public schools, legal challenges to segregated buses and trains, hospitals and other facilities and assistance, including loans and “front” licenses, for black entrepreneurs wanting to open businesses in areas reserved for whites.

Guide for Executives

Lubke, managing director of Abbott Laboratories’ South African subsidiary as well as president of the chamber, said these proposals reflect the priorities of moderate black leaders and thus should help guide senior business executives in developing their firms’ political action programs.

But he stressed that “the American Chamber of Commerce does not now, nor has it ever, taken a decision to support a policy of civil disobedience that should be followed by its member companies.

“We do, however, fully support the change process and take all opportunities to participate in a constructive manner,” Lubke said.

Civil disobedience is illegal in South Africa, and anyone convicted of encouraging others to break laws as an act of protest can be imprisoned.

The proposals for corporate action, published Wednesday amid renewed debate in the United States on the role of American companies in South Africa, drew wide criticism from conservative quarters here and took both the government and the U.S. Embassy by surprise.

The Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, made up of Afrikaner businessmen, described the proposals as “irresponsible.”

Prof. Carl Noffke, director of the Institute for American Studies at Rand Afrikaans University here, commented that such involvement of foreign companies in domestic South African politics would be “like Pepsi telling Mikhail Gorbachev that he had to abandon communism” because it has bottling plants in the Soviet Union.

The U.S. Embassy has repeatedly urged American companies to involve themselves more deeply in pressing for political, economic and social reforms here. It repeated President Reagan’s call last September for American companies “to take responsible measures to extend the scope of their influence” in working for fair employment practices, better housing for workers and their families and an end to the restrictions on a person’s right to work wherever he can find a job.