The South African Connection: From Polaroid to Oppenheimer

Extract

Press exposures of starvation wages paid by British firms in South Africa have prompted an official House of Commons inquiry, but one which was dismissed by a columnist in a leading weekly (the New Statesman) as “an exercise, at the lowest, in hypocrisy and, at the highest, in evading an issue. For the issue is surely not what wages firms pay in South Africa but whether the firms should be there at all.” This robust view apart the case for withdrawal of foreign capital investment or its restriction, or the freezing of further flows, gets short shrift in business circles. Yet faced with growing pressures to disinvest, these circles have been casting around for arguments to placate the total-withdrawal lobby. Two initiatives are most frequently cited as proof that left to itself, business will reform apartheid. These are the Polaroid experiment and the Oppenheimer phenomenon.