The apartheid regime was imposed with violence by a group of people, predominantly white, with varying degrees of opposition (divide and rule) from other ethnic groups, including the various clans, kingdoms and tribes of indigenous African peoples of black ethnicity.
Those in the white group were citizens of that Republic of South Africa, whilst the others who lived and had been born there did not have citizenship and were considered as foreigners, because they were citizens of fictional, supposedly independent countries called Bantustans, created by the apartheid regime. The whites had a "democratic system" with political parties and a legislative chamber.
Thanks to this legal system, the companies of the whites had a labour legislation and framework providing more than beneficial profit-making for their owners, and even a "welfare state" specifically for whites and those who they chose to give access to it.
But the apartheid regime had other accomplices, the multinationals operating in South Africa or trading with it.
And here is where we introduce more current variables, Corporate Social Responsibility, and companies as actors of cooperation or development and the Busan Declaration, where for-profit companies are incorporated into official development policies.
Where would South African companies in the apartheid era or companies trading with South Africa under the apartheid regime stand with the new instruments governing companies and development policies?
They could quite easily have a whole CSR plan assisting white children with diabetes and recycle all their paper to reduce logging. Conclusion: CSR that is not regulated, universal and binding that is not translated into law has very little value.
A company could, also, be working on development projects in Rhodesia or the actual Zimbabwe because that country is poor; even in the Rhodesia of the past, complying with South African or Rhodesian labour legislation (South-South cooperation at the end of the day) and, may even be doing in one country what it does not do in its own, or vice versa (comply with ILO standards). Multinationals applied different rules to the parent company and to their various subsidiaries, as they do now.
White South Africa, before being in the spotlight and before the people’s (not the European States) boycott, could have signed the Busan Declaration because it would have met the conditions of decent work for its white citizens and would have promoted human rights, democracy and good governance, for its white citizens (the others, as already mentioned, were considered foreigners and immigrants).
The apartheid regime fell, among other things, thanks to outside pressure and the damage to the image of companies producing in or trading with South Africa. In the meantime, Spanish citizens like the singer Julio Iglesias or sports people Ángel Nieto, Ballesteros and Orantes, brushed aside the plight of the oppressed, did not know who Mandela was, and enjoyed the financial rewards of that South Africa.
Companies, to resume, were accomplices of the apartheid regime. Shall we quote the multinationals involved? They are all on NASDAQ, London, and other financial markets; and they all have their philanthropic foundations and image laundering.
Finally, could apartheid happen again now? Would it be tolerated? The leaders who attended Mandela’s memorial service would probably say no. But,...
It could. And it is happening, with the same degree of complicity, in my view.
Companies and a ’national-state’ economic system can operate, if allowed, using approaches similar to apartheid, which benefit one human group over another. Such a regime exists where a territory is militarily occupied by one human group that exploits the economic resources of the other and keeps their economy in a state of total dependence.
An example of this is what is happening in historic Palestine, to the Palestinian human group, their non-rights as citizens, and the discrimination they suffer in law and in practice. Their economy is colonised and the international aid they receive, as poor people, is poured back into the Israeli economy. The International Trade Union Confederation and, more recently, the European Trade Union Confederation have warned of the dangers of trading with the Israeli settlements, which strengthens the occupation. The whole Israeli economy and population are benefitting from this appalling discrimination and occupation. And it is high time that it stopped. It is time to fight apartheid, the occupation, and their accomplices, wherever they may be.
By Santiago González Vallejo, economist
