The Sullivan Principles: South Africa, Apartheid, and Globalization

In 1977, an American Baptist minister and civil rights leader named Leon Sullivan proposed a set of six principles to govern U.S. investments and business operations in South Africa. These principles included the elimination of workplace discrimination, pay equality, education, and sponsoring social programs and community investment. Sullivan previously fought for equal employment opportunities for African Americans in the United States, and he hoped that by making the same opportunities available to blacks living under apartheid, apartheid would be undermined at a social and economic level. Sullivan also hoped that companies would use their privileged position to lobby for political change. From the beginning, the Sullivan Principles were the subject of controversy in the U.S. anti-apartheid movement. Politicians and business leaders celebrated the Principles as a constructive way for the United States to encourage reform in South Africa without undue meddling in the country or fostering anti-capitalism. Most activists viewed Sullivan as at best naively misguided. Jennifer Davis, executive director of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) described Sullivan thusly in 1987: “I believe that Reverend Sullivan is profoundly concerned about the issue of apartheid … But in my view, and in the often expressed view of many progressive South Africans, his chosen form of opposition to the system has, in fact, blunted attempts to eliminate all US economic support for that system and has, effectively, allowed it extra years of life.”1 To the former camp, the Sullivan Principles were a way to improve U.S. business practices, in the hopes that the effects would ripple outward into the South African economy as a whole, while to the latter, the Principles were a distraction that were intended to limit the effectiveness of corporate divestment.