Remembering South African Divestment

Back in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, various corporations and many universities started to dump any monetary holdings originating from South Africa. Demonstrations occurred on various US campuses, urging an end to apartheid. California campuses were particularly involved. Students boycotted classes and participated in rallies. This was the era when I attended college, twice (1971-75, 1976-80).

Improvised campus shanty-town at UC-Berkeley.

I don't recall demonstrations at Douglass College, Rutgers College of Nursing, or Rutgers-Newark, but then my attention was grabbed by within-university issues, such as student safety. However, when I looked at the article by Al-Jazeera America, I noticed that Jesse Jackson spoke on the Rutgers campus, calling for this State University to divest its holdings.

Now, I do remember my family members having opinions about South African divestment. You see, a number of uncles and cousins had attended and graduated from Rutgers and contributed to its alumni funds. So, when you make contributions, you pretty much consider that the university should listen to what you had to say. My father was opposed to divestment; his thinking was that the university shouldn't respond to student pressure and he also thought that the South African government represented good, conservative values (except that a majority of the people were deprived of significant rights, based on the color of their skin). See where that disagreement was going?

It wasn't really useful to argue with my father about the issue, but in the long run, Rutgers decided to divest, leading my father to boycott his contributions to the alumni fund to show his disagreement, but he still had to pay part of his children's tuition, and Rutgers administration never changed its mind, so that's how that remained until the apartheid regime fell. My father did, however, resume his contributions to the alumni fund during the 1990s.

Demonstration in the streets at Harvard.

Of course, when I do look at some of the college movements back in the day, I realize that even though I attended twice and now hold two bachelor's degrees, I missed the majority of the protest movement. But I did participate in one sit-in at the Associate Dean's office, due to the fact that students were being assaulted on their way from university housing to the campus. I would hope that I would have joined the protests urging divestment, but I am not sure what I would have done, given family political views. I didn't have the courage to prevail against family views that I do now.

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