For the past 20 years, Harvard student activists have been calling for total University divestment from South Africa. Their message was loud, clear and unified: Harvard should have no business ties with a government of apartheid.

And for years, the student movement came up against what seemed like a brick wall: an administration that would not be bullied into a move that some thought might jeopardize the financial well-being of the University.

But things have changed in the last few years. As the South African government has moved away from apartheid, divestment activism on American campuses--particularly at Harvard--has died a slow, painful death.

An administrative report released this week indicates that the Harvard Corporation may soon abandon whatever small gestures it had been making towards South African divestment.

Divestment, it seems, could finally become an issue of the past.

Not a Monolith

Contrary to popular belief, Harvard's governors have not been monolithically and uniformly opposed to divestment. Actually, Harvard's policy has changed gradually over the years, approaching but never reaching complete divestment. The Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR), which sets University policy on ethical investment, has for years maintained a line of "selective divestment."

Harvard does not invest in companies with significant holdings in South Africa--generally, more than one percent of the company's total holdings--but it will continue to invest in companies that it sees as playing a necessary, positive role in that country, including some pharmaceutical companies.

Since 1988, Harvard has asked most of the South Africa-connected countries it invests in to leave that country.

Today, Harvard invests $148 million of its near-$6 billion in net assets in 21 U.S. companies with holdings in South Africa, according to a report released last week by the CCSR.

Advising the Corporation

The three-member Corporation committee of D. Ronald Daniel, Robert G. Stone Jr. and chair Charles P. Slichter '45 receives recommendations on South Africa investments from the Advisory Committee on Share-holde Responsibility (ACSR), a group of four faculty members, four alumni and four students formed in 1981.

Shareholders annually submit resolutions asking their companies to withdraw or cut ties from South Africa. On behalf of the University, the CCSR votes on these shareholder resolutions.

But the Corporation has always lagged years behind its more liberal counterpart, the ACSR. In 1984, the ACSR recommended complete divestment from South Africa by a vote of six to five. But the Corporation stood its ground on selective divestment.

Four years later, a joint committee of members of the Corporation and its junior governing board, the Board of Overseers, recommended in a report to the University that Harvard adopt a policy of generally supporting corporate withdrawal from South Africa. Since then, the CCSR has endorsed this policy.