The Divestment Movement: Money Talks
How students, churches, and investors used economic pressure to challenge apartheid.
From Campus to Congress
The divestment movement — demanding that universities, pension funds, and corporations sell their investments in companies doing business in South Africa — became one of the most effective tools of the international anti-apartheid struggle.
It began on American college campuses in the 1970s, where students built shantytown protests and pressured their universities to divest. By the mid-1980s, over 150 American universities had partially or fully divested. Churches, pension funds, and city governments followed. Major corporations like General Motors, IBM, and Barclays Bank faced intense pressure and many eventually withdrew from South Africa.
The financial impact was significant but debated. South Africa's currency collapsed in 1985, and the cost of borrowing soared. Some economists argue that divestment's direct economic impact was modest; others contend that its psychological and political impact — signaling that apartheid South Africa was an international pariah — was more important than the dollar amounts involved.
