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The Moral Status of Apartheid: Can the Presence of Foreign Corporations in South Africa Be Morally Justified?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert N. Mccauley
Robert N. Mccauley*
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia30322
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Extract

Since the international community has offered their nearly unanimous condemnation of the system of apartheid in the Republic of South Africa, the topic of this essay might seem moot. However, the involvement and cooperation with the South African government of numerous governments, businesses, and other institutions suggest that those condemnations do not constitute the final word - certainly not politically, nor, perhaps, morally.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 565 - 579
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1985

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Footnotes

*

Of the many persons who have offered critical comments on this paper, 1 am particularly indebted to Marshall Gregory, William Bechtel, Charles Guthrie, and Errol Harris.

References

1 If, as I suspect some might, consequentialists deny my claim that according to their own positions the question of the evils of apartheid should be prior to the question of corporate practices, then this entire paper might be taken as an attack of their views about the relation of these moral questions surrounding the role of foreign corporations in South Africa.

2 If my characterization of apartheid is sound, though, almost any corporate activity will prove morally problematic eventually.

3 See Wilson, Francis Labor in South African Gold Mines 1911-1969 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1972), 13.Google Scholar

4 Fredrickson, George White Supremacy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press 1981), 220Google Scholar

5 Ibid., Chapter 4

6 See Randall, Peter ed., Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1982 (Johannesburg: The Natal Witness 1983). 60–4.Google Scholar Note that this figure was computed from official statistics which have been severely criticized for their optimism. Other research indicates that the income of black South Africans is subtantially less (see 65-9).

7 In 1959 the government repealed the Native Representation Act of 1936 which provided for a few appointed white representatives in Parliament to represent blacks' interests.

8 See Desmond, Cosmas The Discarded People: An Account of Resettlement in South Africa (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1971).Google Scholar

9 See Carter, Gwendolen Which Way is South Africa Going? (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1980), 29.Google Scholar

10 Randall, 409-11

11 Ibid., 368-70

12 Carter, 132-3

13 Other than short annual visits, most must remain apart from families for ten or more years, since technically (and with the least skilled, really) they lose their jobs each time they return to the ‘homelands’ to visit their families. See Carter, 34.

14 International, Amnesty Political Imprisonment in South Africa (London: Amensty International Publications 1978), 56Google Scholar

15 Black unions in South Africa might constitute a partial exception. However, it was only the Industrial Counciliation Amendment Act (1979) that offered black unions even the possibility of legal recognition and operation. This law prohibits strikes except after the union has pursued a complex conciliation procedure, not applicable to white unions, which takes up to eighteen months. Three points put the situation in some perspective: (1) by 1982 the government had permitted only two unions to register; (2) a legal strike by a black union has yet to occur in South Africa; and (3) government harrassment (as measured, for example, by numbers of detentions) of black unions and their leadership has dramatically increased since this law was passed.

16 The Sullivan principles appear in Myers, Desaix III, Business and Labor in South Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1980), 137–43.Google Scholar

17 Carter, 92

18 Donagan, Alan Morality, Property and Slavery , The Lindley Lecture, Unviersity of Kansas 1981, 13Google Scholar

19 See General Motors in South Africa: Secret Contingency Plans ‘In The Event of Civil Unrest’ (New York, NY: The Africa Fund 1979).

20 Feinberg, Joel ‘Legal Paternalism,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1971) 105–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 … demands which, incidentally, are an anchor point at one end of a continum of such demands which, arguably, apply to corporations involved in many other countries as well.

22 Donagan, 13