IBM Is No Role Model for Equality : Its South Africa Operations Actually Strengthen White Rule

IBM “can do business (in South Africa) in a way that provides a model for a society in which black, white, Asian and Colored might someday enjoy peace and freedom. It may be an impossible dream. But I’m not ready to give up on it,” IBM President John Akers concluded in a New York Times article a year ago.

As an example of this “model,” he pointed to IBM’s equal-opportunity employment practices and grants for black education. He also said that IBM had a strong business interest in ending apartheid and had committed itself to “actively work for change.” He described IBM’s primary mission in South Africa as a moral and not an economic one, saying, “IBM could depart with very little financial sacrifice . . . . But we believe the right thing to do is to remain and to redouble our efforts to advance social equality.”

As an engineer at IBM, I agree with Akers that the company can be more of a force for change by staying in South Africa. But facts about the actual business operations there indicate that IBM is more a “model” for the status quo and that its sales strategies strengthen white rule.

Selling computers in South Africa means that you do business almost exclusively with whites. IBM omits this fact in arguing that it is a model for equality. “IBM has no black customers, even for typewriters or personal computers,” according to a corporate manager responsible for the company’s equal-opportunity policy in South Africa. The one exception is sales to black government officials in the “homelands.”

It’s not that IBM would not be delighted to sell computers to blacks if they had the need for computers and the money to buy them. But the inferior and segregated education, housing and health care, the poverty and government repression, mean that blacks have more urgent needs.

Some of these needs are addressed by IBM. The company provides about $4 million a year for black education to schools, job-training programs and a number of other organizations. Still, this is only 1% of the roughly $400 million that IBM earns annually by doing business with white South Africans. By comparison, even IBM’s tax payments to the apartheid government far exceed its contributions to the black community.

Of the 2,000 South African IBM employees, 286 are black. The black employees do enjoy equal opportunity consistent with the company’s adherence to the employment principles set forth by the Rev. Leon Sullivan. But almost all the employees’ time is devoted to serving the needs of whites. IBM’s equal-opportunity policy manager said that 14 employees, less than 1% of the work force, work on programs that directly benefit blacks. Yet four of every five South Africans are black.

In other countries IBM need not consider the racial composition of its customers. But in South Africa racism is the law, and the white minority uses its power to deny blacks basic human rights. Since IBM certainly does not want to collaborate with the apartheid regime, it must consider the relative extent of its service to each racial group.

It also should assess the effect of that service on political power. In practical terms, sales to whites are IBM’s biggest effect on South Africa, and such business dealings directly support white rule. This is especially true because of the nature of IBM’s product: Computers are high-leverage tools that provide capability far beyond their cost. Whites control computers throughout the economy, and that helps whites control the state. By contrast, IBM’s relatively meager grants for black education are overwhelmed by the black communities’ poorly funded, segregated schools.

The conclusion of the Senate subcommittee on Africa would seem to apply to IBM: “The net effect of American investment has been to strengthen the economic and military self-sufficiency of South Africa’s apartheid system.”

IBM agrees that its legitimacy in South Africa depends on whether sales strengthen apartheid or help undermine it. “If it were true that IBM sales strengthen apartheid, there would be no argument for being there,” according to the equal-opportunity manager. Using that standard, IBM should depart.

IBM could change the way it does business in South Africa. A business more oriented to the needs of the black majority would not necessarily be incompatible with profit, but it might be less cozy and more difficult than just selling computers exclusively to the white rulers.

A true “model” for change would expand black education and training programs; assign half the employees to business activity aimed at blacks--especially health, housing and education needs; increase the number of black IBM employees; reduce sales to whites; support protest activities against race discrimination as General Motors Corp. has begun to do, and help multiracial organizations fighting apartheid, such as the United Democratic Front and the African National Congress.

Reports from South Africa suggest that incentive for change has come from black protests and boycotts, economic stagnation, the refusal of international banks to roll over loans, and the possibility that foreign companies might simply leave the country. IBM can tailor its activities to build on these incentives.

Without fundamental changes in IBM’s South African business policies, the company will continue to support an oppressive system, in conflict with Akers’ specifications. And IBM’s business practices will continue to reflect the whites-only model of the apartheid regime.

James Leas is an electronics engineer at an IBM production facility in the Washington area. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.