4 OPINION Page 4 Wednesday, February 9, 1983 The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan South African divestment:A movement pickngup s team' Vol. XCIII, No. 107 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Getting tough on guidelines MAKING A SERIOUS inquiry into military research at the Univer- sity isn't one of the Research Policies Committee's strohg points. The com- mittee, which is charged with recom- mending a set of non-classified resear- ch guidelines and establishing a mechanism for . enforcing the guidelines, had a chance to make such an inquiry last week, but they have chosen to ignore the issue. Committee members voted against a proposal by student member Tom Marx which would have established a subcommittee to investigate several specific research projects. These projects were labelled "irresponsible" by a military research report compiled for the Michigan Student Assembly last year. Group members didn't feel they had enough time to investigate the projects properly. They also did not like the idea of investigating the specific projects targeted in the MSA report. But the committee, which faces a 'March deadline for reporting back to the Senate Assembly, has had ample time to do its work. Committee mem- bers are still divided on the type of mechanism to be used to enforce the guidelines, but instead of using Marx's plan as a way to solving their differen- ces, they have delayed progress again. Voting down the plan because it named specific projects to be reviewed tries to hide the fact that these projects raise some serious questions about military research at the University. These questions need answering. Marx's proposal offered a vehicle to get those answers as well as providing some much-needed data for the com- mittee. The data can be used to help solve the arguments over the type of mechanism needed to enforce the guidelines. The committee has a chance to reconsider its hasty action. A modified proposal along the lines of Marx's original plan is going to be introduced at the group's meeting next week. If the committee is serious about providing a workable enforcement mechanism for the guidelines and wants to provide answers to the questions raised, it should not be so quick to vote against this new plan. Time is running out as the Research Policies Committee nears its March deadline. But there is still time for the committee to show it is serious about the job it's supposed to do. By Carole Collins WASHINGTON-Long relegated to the idealistic margins, the campaign for "divestment" in South Africa is gaining ground today in the real world of U.S. high finance-for reasons which include sound business sense, as well as moral principles. For better than a decade, American critics of apartheid have been working to end U.S. corporate and investment links to South Africa, often with little effect. But in the last 12 months more headway has been made than in the previous 12 years. THE TURNABOUT has come primarily because church and labor groups, com- munity, and anti-apartheid organizations have united their somewhat disparate objec- tives around a common new strategy: using the tremendous height of public money to bring pressure on U.S. banks and cor- porations active in South Africa. The results have been impressive: " The Massachusetts legislature Jan. 4 easily overrode outgoing Gov. Edward King's veto to pass the strongest state pension fund divestment bill in the nation. Some $120 million invested in firms doing business in South Africa is at stake. " One week earlier, outgoing Michigan Gov. William Milliken signed into law a bill ban- ning investment by state educational in- stitutions in companies operating in South Africa. " In late October, conservative Grand Rapids, Mich.,-hometown of Gerald Ford and many Dutch-Americans with church and ethnic ties to Afrikaaners-adopted a policy prohibiting the deposit of idle municipal funds in banks lending to South Africa or in U.S. companies doing business there. " Last June, Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to pass, with strong bipar- tisan support, a pension fund divestment bill. Soon after, Wilmington, Del., passed a similar bill, and councilman John Ray on Jan., 4 introduced another here in the nation's capital. Increasingly, these developments dovetail with the concerns of some in the business Wasserman world itself. A First National Bank of Chicago stockholder, during the bank's 1980 annual meeting, noted that some $90 million had been lost because the bank-like the U.S. government-ignored signs of extreme social tension in the Shah's Iran. Another shareholder added: "Things are not going to get better in South Africa. So we had better, begin to think now about what we're going to do as things get worse." THE CHRYSLER CORPORATION an- nounced Jan. 26 its decision to sell off its 25 percent stake in Sigma Motors Corporation, South Africa's third largest auto and truck manufacturing company. Not long before, General Electric backed out of a mining ven- ture in the KwaZulu black "homeland," in part because of mounting calls for investment in the company's home state of Connecticut. Polaroid, Inc., pulled out in 1977, after lear- ning that its South African distributor had violated a 1971 agreement not to sell products to the government. Even South Africa's own largest company, the Anglo-American Cor- poration, has been vastly expanding its over- seas investments as insurance against future upheavals, according to some observers. A few companies are even finding ways to profit from pro-divestment sentiment. Chemical Bank still makes trade-related loans of a non-strategic nature to South Africa but has made no loans to the South African government or companies doing business there since 1974. That bank is setting up a special fund that would invest only in non- South Africa-related companies in an effort to capture part of the divested public pension funds and church endowments. No one understands more clearly that divestment has become a serious matter than the South Africans themselves. While South African consulates have often cpnducted low- key lobbying efforts against divestment bills, only recently have South Africa's paid lob- byists become active at the state level, in response to the growipg success of state and municipal divestment legislation. THESE efforts have been successfully coun- tered by groups which enjoy widespread sup- port from churches, organized labor and community organizations. Among the proposals for alternative investment made by divestment supporters in Massachusetts, one in particular struck home with state residen- ts: that the pension funds be used to help revitalize local neighborhoods and generate jobs. There, as in Michigan, the Ford Motor Company lobbied vigorously against divest- ment, arguing for an amendment that would have exempted companies which observe the so-called "Sullivan principles" of corporateq responsibility. Black unions in South African have publicly rejected this approach, which involves voluntary, company-sponsored im- provements in working conditions, as cosmetic and difficult to monitor or evaluate.- Adoption of the Ford amendment itn- Massachusetts would have exempted from the divestment bill's coverage 11 of the 13 companies in South Africa in which state pen- sion funds are invested. In Michigan, Ford's lobbyist implicitly conceded divestment's- impact by asking state legislators to exempt the automaker as "an economically distressed corporation." The University of Michigan, another active opponent of the bill, may still challenge it in the courts as an in- fringement on university autonomy. Divestment advocates are far from claiming that the battle has been won. In mid-1982, U.S. banks had $3.6 billion in out- standing loans to South Africa's public and private sectors, and direct investment was estimated at $2.6 billion. Moreover, the Reagan administration has removed restric- tions on trade with South Africa's military and police and eased restrictions on nuclear-4 related exports. Nevertheless, divestment as an issue has generated a potent, "new federalist" ap- proach. It promises to keep apartheid more effectively on the minds of millions of Americans who do care, after all, about the way their money is spent. Collins wrote this article for the Pacific News Service. g Blundering in El Salvador INCE 1981, THE United States has ' poured more than three-quarters of a -billion dollars of economic and military aid to El Salvador. But to date, money that was supposed to buy peace, stability, economic opportunity, and most importantly a working democracy for the impoverished masses of El Salvador, has paid for lit- tle more than dashed hopes and a wounded leg for a U.S. military officer. By now, the bankruptcy of the Reagan administration's military solution to the political problems of the Central American nation should be ob- vious. The recent rebel takeover of the major Salvadoran city of Berlin clearly shows neither the leftist guerrillas nor the Salvadoran army is winning. In the midst of this stalemated cross- fire is the Salvadoran people. Yet in spite of battles where the peasants are the real losers, every six months Congress goes on with the charade, erpetrated by the Reagan ad- ministration, which certifies the Salvadoran government is making progress on human rights. Thus, the message from Washington is clear: The United States will con- tinue sending aid regardless of reform and blind itself to the atrocities com- mitted all in the name of democracy. In the battle for Berlin, more than 250 died, apparently a small number in A civil war that has killed thousands. But this time among the wounded was an American soldier. His wound, if nothing else, should provoke the reexamination of U.S. policy in that the president and Congress have so far cursorily dismissed. The fact that the soldier was trying to contact a Salvadoran army unit on an actual mission is a clear violation of the guidelines under which U.S. ad- visors were sent there. Apparently Americans have been close to the fighting putting the United States close to the war. What were they doing there? How many other times have Americans been actively involved in actual missions? How much is being hidden from the American people? These are all questions the president must answer. But the real question is what are U.S. military advisors doing there in the first place? The president will beg to differ, but the real answer is that they are helping foment an un- workable military solution on a problem that is inherently political. Before the United States becomes more deeply involved in the morass of the Salvadoran jungle, before another American is wounded, before more in- nocent civilians die in a senseless struggle, Congress needs to put a rein on the president and his senseless policies in Central America. El Salvador needs 37 peace negotiators much more than it needs 37 military strategists to turn a military stalemate into a political solution. THIS IS YOUR CATJ 3?PEAKIN&G.. AiN 1, lll' Uiu0 AMERc S o~ 4 4 I I L LETTERS TO THE DAILY: ,. _ 4 Laser lover's economics To the Daily: I found Andy Rotstein's "save- all laser alternative" to be short- sighted, if not ludicrous ("Speaker supports laser weapons," Daily, Feb. 3). Gran- ted, the laser has great potential within the dimensions that scien- ce has defined to date. But there is a gap between a potential technology and economic recovery. At this moment private enter- prise and taxpayers (through Bad judgment on Carpenter government spending) are in- vesting billions of dollars on developing high technology ideas in areas that were not heard of a few years ago. The laser has already been drawing from this pool of invest- ment and its share will increase in the future. So what will its ap- plication as a weapon do for the economy? It might cause people working on nuclear projects to switch jobs; or it might draw some people out of constructive laser science into the field of weapons reearch. off to suffer the pains of a new age. New technologies may make us economically better off in the long run, but they are not going to: help the unemployed; technologically unskilled labor I force. Rotstein's "funding by printing money" suggestion would effectively diminish the compensation our unemployed and elderly receive. There always seems to be a new advocate at the podium at- tempting to persuade the public of a particular program's worth. It is about time we hear a humane sneaker who is commit- To the Daily: Your snide remarks concer- ning the death of Karen Carpen- ter ("Karen Carpenter dead at age 32," Daily, Feb. 5) turned on someone's grave in a morbid ritual of sarcastic drivelling. You have the moral worth of algae. -Patrick Anderson Fehruarv 7 -n 1'. *tAiATA