The academic boycott of South Africa comprised a series of
boycott
A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict so ...
s of
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...
n academic institutions and scholars initiated in the 1960s, at the request of the
African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...
, with the goal of using such international pressure to force the end to South Africa's
system of apartheid. The boycotts were part of a larger international campaign of "isolation" that eventually included political, economic, cultural and
sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...
boycotts. The academic boycotts ended in 1990, when its stated goal of ending apartheid was achieved.
[F. W. Lancaster & Lorraine Haricombe]
"The Academic Boycott of South Africa: Symbolic Gesture or Effective Agent of Change?"
, ''Perspectives on the Professions'', Vol. 15, No. 1, Fall 1995, retrieved 16 September 2006
An academic boycott isolates scholars by depriving them of the formal and informal resources they need to carry on their scholarship. An academic boycott can include:
# Scholars refusing to collaborate with South African scholars on research,
# Publishers, journals, and other scholarly resources refusing to publish scholarship or experiments by South African scholars, or refusing to provide access to scholars in South Africa,
# International conferences refusing to locate in South Africa or include South African scholars,
# Scholars refusing to travel to South Africa or participate in activities such as serving on thesis committees for South African students,
# Universities and other institutions worldwide refusing to grant access to their resources to South African scholars, or to invite South African scholars to their own institutions.
Both during and after the apartheid era, there was debate whether academic boycotts were an effective or appropriate form of sanctions. Even within anti-apartheid circles there was debate over whether the boycotts were ethically justified, and whether they hurt liberal scholars more than conservative ones.
[ Campus libertarians criticized the ban because they believed it interfered with academic freedom, and conservative groups worldwide criticized the boycotts simply because they "disliked such anti-apartheid initiatives".][Andy Beckett]
''The Guardian'', 12 December 2002, retrieved 16 September 2006
Subsequent research in the post-apartheid area has claimed that the boycotts were more a "symbolic gesture of support" for anti-apartheid efforts rather than a direct influencer of the situation.[ Additionally, the academic boycott was perceived by the targets of the boycott, South Africa scholars, as unjust and ]discriminatory
Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, rel ...
.[
]
Motivation
The African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...
first called for an academic boycott to protest South African apartheid in 1958 in Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Tog ...
. The call was repeated the following year in London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
Formal declarations
British Academics
In 1965, 496 university professors and lecturers from 34 British universities signed the following declaration in protest against apartheid and violations of academic freedom. They referred to the bans against Jack Simons and Eddie Roux, two well-known progressive academics who had been banned from teaching and writing in South Africa because of their political beliefs.["Spotlight on South Africa", Dar es Salaam, 26 November 1965, reprinted by on the ANC Website for Historical Documents ]
United Nations
In December 1980, the United Nations passed a resolution "Cultural, Academic and other boycotts of South Africa":
:The General Assembly, .. Noting that the racist regime of South Africa is using cultural, academic, sports and other contacts to promote its propaganda for the inhumane policies of apartheid and "bantustan
A Bantustan (also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland; ) was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (n ...
ation",
:1. Requests all States to take steps to prevent all cultural, academic, sports, and other exchanges with the racist regime of South Africa;
: : :
:2. Also requests States that have not yet done so:
: : :
:2 (b) To cease any cultural and academic collaboration with South Africa, including the exchange of scientists, students and academic personalities, as well as cooperation on research programmes.
: : :
:4. Urges all academic and cultural institutions to terminate all links with South Africa
:5. Encourages anti-apartheid and solidarity movements in their campaigns for cultural, academic and sports boycotts of South Africa
Apartheid-era debate
"The ethical and other issues surrounding the academic boycott deeply divided the academic community, both within and outside South Africa."[
]
Proponents
"Boycott proponents argued that academics should not be treated as an elite detached from the political and social environment in which it functions, especially since some of the South African universities seemed to be tools of the Nationalist government."[
]
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (7 October 193126 December 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbish ...
, a prominent leader within the anti-apartheid, described his clear support for the academic boycott of South Africa. He wrote that it needed to be maintained for institutions which had a bad record in opposing apartheid, but could be lifted for others as the political situation eased. The boycott had "certainly made a number of people sit up and take notice, especially the so-called liberal universities."
They thought that just as a matter of right they would find acceptance because they were allowing blacks into their establishments. I mustn't belittle them too much, I think that they did stand up for academic freedom and so forth, but I don't think myself actually that they were sufficiently vigorous and the boycott helped to knock sense into their heads, to realise that they did have a role in seeking to undermine that vicious system f apartheid
I would, I think, now still say that we maintain he academic boycottinsofar as, if for instance academics from here want to go to South Africa then you want to look at who is inviting them. Under whose auspices are they going? Are they going to institutions that have a good track record in their opposition to apartheid? But I would say that as things begin to ease up, this ought perhaps to be one of the first of the constraints that goes to give some of these people the reward.
But I would myself say it is important for academics outside of South Africa also to say they want to reward places like UWC which stuck their necks out and then let these others get the crumbs that remain from the table.
Opponents
"Opposition to this boycott persisted throughout the 80s: conservatives
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
around the world disliked such anti-apartheid initiatives; campus libertarians perceived a loss of academic freedom
Academic freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach ...
; and some liberal South Africans argued that their universities, as centres of resistance to apartheid, made precisely the wrong targets."[
]
From within anti-Apartheid circles
Opponents from within anti-Apartheid circles "argued that ideas and knowledge should be treated differently than tangible commodities, that obstacles to information access could actually hurt the victims of apartheid (for example, retard medical research and, ultimately, reduce the quality of health care), and that an academic boycott (in contrast to economic, trade, or political boycott) would not even be noticed by the South African government. Change is much more likely to occur by providing information than by withholding it."[
]Such a boycott would cut a university off from its life blood, the nurturing flow of ideas.... The campaign plays directly into the hands of the destructive right-wing in this country which would also dearly love to cut us off from the world and its influences.
Solomon Benatar, a critic, wrote that
Academic boycott has been justified as an appropriate political strategy in the struggle against the oppression of apartheid. Moral outrage against racist policies has led to the claim that academic boycott is a morally imperative component of a broader sanctions policy. This claim has neither been substantiated by a reasoned ethical argument nor weighted against an ethically justifiable approach that is consistent with universal humanitarian aspirations and which allows rejection of apartheid to be coupled to constructive endeavours.[Solomon Benatar]
"Academic boycott: political strategy or moral imperative? Selective support as a justifiable alternative"
''South African Medical Journal
The ''South African Medical Journal'' is a monthly peer-reviewed open-access medical journal which has been published in South Africa since 1884. It is sponsored by the South African Medical Association and published by the association's publis ...
'' 80(4):206–7, 17 August 1991, retrieved 6 July 2006
="Selective" Alternatives
=
Solomon Benatar,[Solomon R. Benatar]
"An alternative to academic boycott"
''Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'' 343, 505–506, 8 February 1990, retrieved 16 September 2006. a professor at University of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...
, and others advocated an alternative proposal: a "selective boycott"/"selective support" effort which would boycott South African organizations only if they were practitioners of apartheid and would extend support to organizations that did not practice apartheid. This alternative proposal was criticized because of both "the practical problems of implementation" and that "it implicitly endorsed the idea that political views are valid determinants of who should attend scholarly meetings, whose work should be published, and so on."[
]
Post-Apartheid analysis
"That most of the scholars in our study judged the boycott to be an irritant or inconvenience, rather than a significant barrier to scholarly progress, suggests that it proved more a symbolic gesture than an effective agent of change."[
]
Easily circumvented
"The academic boycott was more of an irritation than a true obstacle to scholarly progress."[
"In most cases, scholars and libraries were able to circumvent the boycott one way or another—for example, by using 'third parties' in less antagonistic countries although with delays and at greater expense."][
]
Perceived as unjust discrimination
"Many outh Africanscholars felt left out, isolated, unjustly discriminated against."[
"Suspicions were created" ... "that a submission was really rejected for political reasons, not the reasons claimed", "that the high incidence of inactive research materials, such as biological agents and antibodies, received by South African institutions was not a mere coincidence"][
]
Comparisons to academic boycotts of Israel
The academic boycott of South Africa is frequently invoked as a model for more recent efforts to organize academic boycotts of Israel.[
Some invoke the comparison to claim that an academic boycott of Israel should not be controversial based on the misconception that the academic boycott of South Africa was uncontroversial and straightforward. The reality, at the time, was very different. The effort was the subject of significant criticism and contentious debate from diverse segments.] Andrew Beckett writes, in the Guardian, on what he believes to be a mistaken comparison:
In truth, boycotts are blunt weapons. Even the most apparently straightforward and justified ones, on closer inspection, have their controversies and injustices.
Other, such as Hillary and Stephen Rose in ''Nature'', make the comparison and argue for an academic boycott of Israel based on a belief that the academic boycott of South Africa was effective in ending apartheid. George Fink responds to this claim in a letter to ''Nature'':
The assertion ..that the boycott of South Africa by the world's academic communities 'was instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa' is a deception.
The African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...
, which was the leading anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, has published extensive documentation to support their assertion that the boycott campaign, but not the academic boycott specifically, was, indeed, instrumental in ending apartheid.
See also
* History of South Africa in the apartheid era
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
* Anti-Apartheid Movement
The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), was a British organisation that was at the centre of the international movement opposing the South African apartheid system and supporting South Africa's non-White population who were persecuted by the policie ...
(UK)
* Internal resistance to South African apartheid
Internal resistance to apartheid in South Africa originated from several independent sectors of South African society and took forms ranging from social movements and passive resistance to guerrilla warfare. Mass action against the ruling Nat ...
* Disinvestment from South Africa
Disinvestment (or divestment) from South Africa was first advocated in the 1960s, in protest against South Africa's system of apartheid, but was not implemented on a significant scale until the mid-1980s. The disinvestment campaign, after bein ...
References
External links
"South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy"
– A curricular resource for schools and colleges on the struggle to overcome apartheid and build democracy in South Africa
African Activist Archive
– An online archive of materials of the solidarity movement and boycott movement in the United States
{{DEFAULTSORT:Academic Boycott of South Africa
Boycotts of apartheid South Africa
Foreign relations of South Africa
History of South Africa
Education controversies