Investments-Republic of South Africa

01-07-02

A Resolution of the Michigan State University Trustees Concerning Sanctions against the Republic of South Africa

Whereas, the Trustees with the faculty, staff and students of Michigan State University, in common with millions of people around the world, have sought to support their common cause with the peoples of South Africa in eliminating discrimination on the basis of race, creed, and gender;

Whereas, since 1978, the Michigan State University has supported the struggle against the apartheid system of racial discrimination in South Africa through education research, and extension, including conferences, workshops, and publications;

Whereas, the Transitional Executive Council of South Africa has announced elections in April 1994 in which, for the first time, all South Africans will be eligible to vote;

Whereas, representatives of the majority peoples of South Africa have called on all the friends of South Africa to end economic and cultural sanctions in light of the irreversibility of the process which they believe will create in 1994 a majority-rule and democratic government to represent all the people of South Africa;

Therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Trustees of Michigan State University:

Hereby revokes its resolutions passed in 1978 sanctioning South Africa and divesting from corporations operating in the Republic of South Africa;

Hereby urges the Michigan State University Foundation to undertake a similar revocation of its resolutions sanctioning South Africa;

Calls on the corporations, public and private institutions, and individuals in Michigan to re-engage with South Africa to seek to build educational and citizen exchange as well as foreign trade and investment between the two peoples as the foundation for a more just, prosperous, and democratic non-racial South Africa;

Urges the faculty, staff, and students of Michigan State University, through its departments, centers, and institutes, to continue and to increase their activities to assist in the educating and training of disadvantaged South Africans and to assist the State of Michigan in establishing and enlarging such educational, trade, financial, and citizen exchange as is helpful in building a non-racial and democratic South Africa and increasing the foreign trade and linkages of the State of Michigan;

Urges all corporations, institutions, and individuals in Michigan to continue to honor the special United Nations sanctions against South Africa relating to arms, nuclear matters, and oil, until those sanctions are revoked by the Security Council of the United Nations;

Calls on all those who re-invest in South Africa to abide by the Code of Conduct of the South African Council of Churches (attached), as revised from the Platform of Guiding Principles for Foreign Investors of the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions,

States unequivocally that these actions to end sanctions and to re-engage with South Africa do not constitute a recognition of the white minority government as though it were representative of all the people of South Africa; and,

Asserts that the Trustees of Michigan State University, as representatives of the people of Michigan, stand ready to re-impose our acts of sanction if we are called to do so by the democratic movement of South Africa because of any interference with the orderly progress to democracy and majority rule by the present or succeeding government or other powerful minority forces in South Africa.

 

Enacted: 3/31/78

Amended: 12/8/78, 12/3/82, 11/19/93