200 March To Protest Apartheid

By VINCE KASPER, Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: June 17, 1986

Toting placards and chanting slogans that reflected their anti-apartheid sentiments, more than 200 demonstrators marched for two hours in Center City yesterday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Soweto uprising in South Africa.

The protesters, who massed during evening rush hour in front of IBM offices at 17th and Market streets, used the opportunity to call for the computer giant's divestiture from South Africa, where its 1985 sales exceeded $230 million.

"They should get out because that will send a double message (to the South African government), both a moral message and an economic message," said the Rev. Paul Washington, of the Church of the Advocate.

Washington said as long as IBM and other large U.S. corporations continue to do business in a country dominated by a white minority, "that helps to sustain that system."

The rally was organized by the Martin Luther King Anti-Apartheid Coalition, a group of religious, peace, labor and community organizations seeking total American economic withdrawal from South Africa.

Through picketing, the coalition has already succeeded in ending the sale of krugerrands, South African gold coins, in the city.

It also has played an integral part in the passage of City Council legislation banning city deposits in banks doing business with companies or government agencies in South Africa.

Anne Mitchell, a protest organizer, acknowledged that the coalition's efforts to destabilize the South African economy would cause widespread unemployment among the country's disenfranchised blacks.

"But they're losing their lives (now)," she said, "so what difference does it make if they're unemployed?"

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