U.S. Money Can Go to South Africa : Olympic Board Votes in Favor of Investing With Firms in Country

The board of trustees of the United States Olympic Foundation, the group in charge of allocating to the U.S. Olympic Committee its $90-million share of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic surplus, has voted, 4-3, against adopting a policy that would restrict investment in companies doing business in South Africa.

Anita DeFrantz, a member of the International Olympic Committee and president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, expressed disappointment Friday in the vote, which she said had been taken Thursday in New York at a meeting of the trustees.

It was DeFrantz, as a trustee, who had proposed what she termed a compromise that would have allowed some time to change investment policies involving the racially segregated nation.

But, she said, William Simon, a former president of the U.S. Olympic Committee who now heads the U.S. Olympic Foundation, opposed doing anything to restrict the investments at this time.

Simon, a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon Administration, could not be reached for comment.

The IOC has imposed sanctions against South Africa for its policy of racial segregation.

The Olympic Foundation, which also earned millions from the sale of U.S. Olympic commemorative coins, has long had an unrestricted investment policy. Although it suffered some reverses in last October’s stock market crash, its portfolio is worth more than $150 million, considerably more than the money it received from the Olympic surplus and the coins.

The DeFrantz proposal would have had the Olympic Foundation make no new investments with companies doing business in South Africa. But it would have permitted the foundation to hold on to investments it already has with such firms, replacing them only when sound investment decisions dictated.

The Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, which is responsible for dispensing the Southern California share of the 1984 Olympic surplus for youth sports projects, has a policy of investing only in a South Africa-free investment fund.

“I say often, we should be investing in athletes, not apartheid,” DeFrantz said Friday.

In a letter to her fellow trustees in the national foundation, she said: “As members of a larger world, where we are all held hostage by the vicious system of apartheid, it seems clear to me what path we should take.”

There are 10 foundation trustees. But three of them were absent for Thursday’s vote, including Robert Helmick, the U.S. Olympic Committee president and the other International Olympic Committee member from the United States.