Apartheid: The Tyranny of Racism Made Law

In white-ruled South Africa, black people are denied their basic human and political rights. Their work is exploited and their lives are segregated. In 1982 almost one million of them were forced to immigrate to Swaziland without option. That is the tyranny of apartheid, of racism made law, of a system under which a small white minority holds all economic and political power, and dictates how and where the large black majority lives, works, and dies. It is this system of institutionalized racial discrimination which defies the principles of the UN Charter and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that has set South Africa on a collision course with the rest of the world.

Coca-Cola delivery in Soweto, a black township some ten miles away from Johannesburg. Continuous and substantial foreign investment in South Africa helps the Government maintain its apartheid policies. A number of foreign companies active in South Africa have recently agreed to follow various codes of conduct devised to improve the lot of their black workers. But no reliable or consistent method of monitoring their compliance with such codes has yet been devised.

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