corporationii. I would think 'Indianu doesn’t want us around’.”
Indiana's trustees voted in 1978 to divest the stock of companies
that had not signed the Sullivan Code. (Eli Lilly is a signatory in
good standing > But last November they rejected a call for total
divestiture. "We wanted to keep our shareholder interest because
we suw it as the most effective way to communicate our (anti
apartheid ] beliefs.” says Harry Gonso, vice president of the univer
sity’s board. But the trustees may also have been thinking of its
"Campaign for Indiana,” n $100 million-plus fund-raiBing drive
that will rely heavily on corporate gifts. Whatever the case, Gonso
reports that even partial divestiture has created more than its
share of problems "Where do you draw the line with corporate
relations?" he asks. "Do you terminate your shareholding or do
you totally sterilize yourself—not accepting scholarship money or
faculty funding?"
Even schools that have voted for full divestiture have not
committed themselves to refusing gifts from corporations
with ties to South Africa, and still accept their research
contracts. Nor have they severed their links with organizations
also declined to give her lost
name. "They’re too absorbed in
their privileged white world.
Sometimes I question what I’m
doing here, and feel I should be
out there in the townships with
my people.”
By South African standards,
UCT is not inexpensive: a year
there costs almost $3,000—far
more than most nonwhites can
afford. The university offers
scholarship grants called bur
saries; 35 percent of the school’s
grants go to nonwhites. "The
most disadvantaged should get
the most help," says James
Moulder, UCT’s director of pub
lic relations. "But we’re always
short of money.”
that invest in companies with South African holdings. One promi
nent example is TIAA-CREF—the largest retirement program for
college faculty and administrators. That one pension plan alone
holds $6.5 billion in securities of companies with South African
connections.
Divestiture has also caused problems for students who wonder
what they can do next. Activists at Columbia, whose trustees
agreed to full divestiture last October, have been reduced to
picketing a local branch of Citibank, South Africa’s largest
American lender and underwriter (Citibank is also one of
the institutions that pushed South Africa into its current eco
nomic crisis.)
During last spring’s three-week blockade of Hamilton Hall,
Columbia president Michael Sovern reminded students that if
they were really serious about pressuring companies with South
African operations, they might consider boycotting Colgate
Palmolive. A New York weekly newspaper, The Village Voice,
promptly labeled his remark the "Toothpaste Manifesto." But it
could just as well have been called the "Soft Drink Manifesto,"
the "Personal Computer Manifesto” or the "Tampon Manifesto.”
Feisty: Skateboard from a sign (left), tray tobogganing
Some help is coming from the
United States, thanks to a new
organization called the Univer
sity of Cape Town Fund. With
support from the likes of CBS
and Exxon, the fund raised
$209,000 in its first year. UCT
turns down 150 qualified stu
dents each year because they
can’t pay their way, says execu
tive director Anne D. Moran,
and "we’re very, very anxious
to fill that gap." American uni
versities have also become in
volved. Tufts and Princeton
are actively raising money for
UCT scholarships, and MIT
earmarks its contributions es
pecially to train engineers.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the
hard-line antiapartheid activ
ists don't want UCT to have
such aid, calling it an escape
valve for the Pretoria regime.
It's not certain whether UCT
can win its fight for the right to
decide who will teach and who
will study, but its determina
tion is symbolized by a plaque
on the wall of Jameson Hall,
which notes, in Latin, that a
1959 education act deprived
UCT of academic freedom.
There remains an empty space
on the plaque, which "will re
main blank until the act is abol
ished,” says UCT vice chancel
lor Dr. Stuart Saunders. "On
that day we shall truly regain
our academic freedom.”
Nancy Coop it r with Put hr
Y o ii n o h t's b a n d m Cape Town