The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, comparing South Africa to Nazi Germany, yesterday said Harvard students have a "moral duty" to demand that the University divest of its holdings in companies with South African operations.

"The idea of Harvard and South Africa in economic alliance is despicable and distasteful," the civil rights leader and former presidential candidate said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

"Would Harvard students tolerate investments in the Third Reich?" Jackson asked.

The World's Disappointment

"People around the world have the highest moral expectations of Harvard [and feel] a lingering disappointment with the moral kinship with" the apartheid regime, Jackson said.

Jackson's comments came shortly after Harvard announced the sale of $1 million of stock in California-based Baker International Corp., a mining concern, because it failed to meet Harvard's standards for its South African operations.

Jackson termed the sale of Baker stock "a very short step in a long journey," and called on Harvard to divest completely.

Students and faculty supporting total divestiture have promised to step up the pressure on President Bok this spring, and continue more than a decade of student opposition to Harvard's South Africa-related investments.

Bok has repeatedly argued that the University can have a greater impact on conditions in South Africa by pressuring companies to improve working conditions there for Blacks and coloreds.

Harvard currently has $565 million in 97 companies doing business in South Africa.

Jackson said divestiture "would set the pace for other universities. At Yale, Brown, Columbia-the students on those compuses would then have the momentum [to push their schools to divest]. The Harvard move would not be left in isolation."

Jackson compared the potential effect of Harvard divesting to that of the four Blacks who staged a sit-in at a Greensboro, N.C. breakfast counter in 1960, little realizing that they would instigate nationwide protests of segregated public facilities in the South.

Jackson, who in a January speech at Memorial Church called Harvard's South Africa investments a "marriage made in hell," also:

* Rejected the argument that Harvard's divestment would be merely a one-shot deal and that less caring investors would buy up its stock: "I think that the holes left in apartheid left by a Harvard withdrawal would not be filled. It would trigger an ever-expanding hole in apartheid."

* Attacked the argument that divestment could wreak havoc on income form Harvard's $2.324 billion endowment, some of which goes for financial aid.. "if students at Harvard want to get their aid on the prerogroty is like a doughnut-it has a hole in it," the Baptist minister said.

* Said he is endorsing a variety of measures introduced in Congress this winter to put pressure on the racist white-minority regime, and called on President Reagan to bring the same pressure to bear on South Africa as he has on the Sandinista Regime in Nicaragua. Reagan has said explicitly that he wants to "remove" the Marxist-led regime in Nicaragua, but not the same of South Africa, "which is playing the game by two sets of rules."

* Said that American corporate withdrawal from the country would encourage European allies to follow suit.

Jackson said he many be making an appearance at Harvard on April 4 as part of a planned nationwide series of protests against South Africa's apartheid policies.

That day marks the 17th anniversary of the assassination of Jackson's former mentor, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"April 4, 1968 was a day of crucifixion," Jackson said. "I hope that April 4, 1985 will be a day of resurrection. I hope that day we will roll the stone away" and begin making progress toward improving the plight of minorities in the white-ruled country