Banks: U.S. banks and financiers play a key role in furthering investment in South Africa, providing advice and capital for U.S. corporations there. Recently, U.S. finance companies have organized huge loans to the South African regime. The Rockefeller banks, Chase Manhattan and Citicorp have been most active in this area; but Manufacturers Hanover, Morgan Guaranty and Kidder Peabody also play an important role. Between 1974 and 1976, Manufacturers Hanover participated in at least $730 million in loans to the South African regime and state-owned corporations. Morgan Guaranty participated in at least $490 million in loans to the regime and its agencies. Kidder Peabody managed at least $130 million in South African bonds. None of these loans were made directly to the South African army; but the banks admit they do not control the ultimate direction of the money. The loans go to develop a white-controlled economy, and give major U.S. banks a long-term stake in apartheid.

U.S. loans to South Africa have helped the South African regime counteract the outflow of investment capital since last June. For this reason, pressured by public interest groups, several banks have agreed to make no new loans to South Africa. Manufacturers Hanover and Morgan Guaranty have also been under pressure. For example, in July the furriers union in New York withdrew over $10 million from Manufacturers Hanover because it continued lending to South Africa.

Harvard owns $600,000 worth of stock in Manufacturers Hanover, and the same amount in Morgan Guaranty.

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There is not enough space here to deal with the activities in South Africa of all companies linked with Harvard, but three more may briefly be mentioned. Union Carbide was long noted for breaking mandatory sanctions on Southern Rhodesia by importing chrome from there. The U.S. government finally made this illegal in 1976, but Union Carbide now refines chrome in South Africa and ships it to the U.S. from there. Where that plant's ore originates is problematical. AMAX has invested in one of the largest Namibian mining companies, Tsumeb, together with other American and South African companies, Falconbridge, a Canadian subsidiary of Superior Oil, owns the Oamites copper mine together with a South African government corporation. Black miners in Namibia are paid even less than miners in South Africa. Fur-thermore, investments there break the mandatory boycott imposed because of South Africa's continued colonization of the country.

Harvard owns $11 million Union Carbide stock, $11 million in AMAX stock, and $1 million in Superior Oil stock.

U.S. companies go to South Africa largely in search of low wages. It is utopian to think they will willingly oppose a system which, like apartheid, has given them profit at a rate of 16-20 per cent--almost twice the average rate of profit in the U.S. Realizing this, black organizations have long called for a total boycott of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The wages foreign investors pay South African blacks are so low, and the aid they give the apartheid regimes so great, that southern Africans fighting for freedom prefer to forego the small benefits of the firms' presence. Steve Biko, the South African leader who died recently in prison, called for the with-drawal of U.S. firms; the ANC, South African student organizations and independent African trade unions, as well as the Namibian and Zimbabwean liberation movements, also call for a boycott.

In spite of these appeals, the Harvard Corporation continues to invest in companies doing business in South Africa. And unless members of this community protest the Corporation's investment decisions, it will listen, as so often before, to the call of profits rather than conscience.

Neva L. Seidman '78, an Economics concentrator living in Adams House, is co-author of U.S. Multinationals in Southern Africa [Lawrence Hill, 1977] and is a consultant to the U.N. Special Committee on Apartheid.