DYTT: Drew Students Organize Against South African Apartheid

For 46 years, legally sanctioned apartheid gripped South Africa and laid the groundwork for political unrest. The story of state-sanctioned racial segregation would become global news and spark an international movement that called for divestment from industries that profited from their stakes held in South Africa. Members of college communities around the country hoped that their divestment would help economically starve the assets of the white power brokers facilitating oppression. Half a world away, the Drew Community joined the outcry, taking up the cause and calling for an end to South African apartheid. Through candid writing on the topic, hosting teach-ins and marching through campus, students, staff and administrators successfully convinced Drew’s Board of Trustees to divest.

In 1948, South Africa’s National Party introduced an officially named “apartheid.” The apartheid legalized racial segregation within South Africa. In 1950, laws codified racial division. Laws created segregated schools, prohibited interracial relationships and geographically barred non-whites from living in or even entering “white areas.” Apartheid continued and, in 1970, new legislation stripped Black South Africans of their South African citizenship, politically disenfranchising them completely. 

Drew’s conversations about South Africa did not begin in 1948. Candid and opinion-driven discussions of the topic show up first in a letter to the editor in the March 10, 1967 edition of The Acorn. The letter examines “areas of governmental inadequacies” that the writer felt Vietnam overshadowed. He points to a violation of the Geneva Accords committed by South Africa. Students witnessing the snippets of the violence in Vietnam were disillusioned by the violence they witnessed through headlines and broadcasts and turned their attention to other instances of injustice around the globe. However, in the late 1960s, allusions to the apartheid were few and far between as attention instead was turned to Vietnam. The author of the letter was right—one injustice overshadowed another. 

Nearly a decade later, in the summer of 1976, attention shifted. In Soweto, South Africa, students rose in protest against the segregated educational system. On June 16, police forces met 10,000 student protesters with tear gas, dogs and gunfire. With two students, ages 12 and 15, dead as a result, the issue and injustice of apartheid caught the attention of students worldwide. A stance of solidarity with the students of South Africa spread among colleges internationally. By the fall of 1976, a new swath of student attention at Drew turned towards South Africa. As one student wrote in the September 17, 1976 edition of The Acorn, it was clear that “the whole world is looking on to Johannesburg.” 

Student attention to South Africa in the paper shifted gears from the international stage towards calls from and for students to engage with the issue of divestment. By the fall of 1977, the concrete call for divestment materialized in The Acorn. A November 18, 1977 edition candidly lays out the way that various members of the Drew communities, from students to the University President Paul Hardin, called for snuffing out apartheid through economic means. Divestment from “companies with South African affiliates” became the most prominent goal for Drewids. Divestment at Drew would be a long and tedious process that students continued to candidly call for using The Acorn over the next two decades. 

As criticism for failure to divest mounted, students grew frustrated and articles grew longer. By the late 1980s students and faculty published lengthy well-researched pieces about the apartheid and economic intervention. The Acorn displays how Drewids could turn to The Acorn to stay informed about the topic. Letters to the editor, smartly written lead editorials and even pieces penned by professors populated the pages of the Acorn and kept the call to end South African apartheid from becoming background buzz. 

Outside of the Acorn, activism against the apartheid materialized in classrooms as students, faculty and administrators came together to host “Teach-Ins.” Teach-ins gained popularity in the midst of the Vietnam War as a form of peaceful protest. The protests made education into a weapon against injustice fueled by an ill-informed populace. 

Drew held its first teach-in on the apartheid on March 21, 1986, to honor the 69 lives lost in Sharpville during a 1960 demonstration. The teach-in featured important economics lessons from Drew professors, a retired South Africa Regional Coordinator from Chase Bank, and academics from other institutions. Though academically inclined educational opportunities were not the only ones on the agenda. South African students also took the floor to share their stories. The evening concluded with speakers from Drew’s Student Government, the Board of Trustees and even Hardin. The forum provided a place for productive conversations to happen. Influential members of the Drew community gathered to engage with students. Education beyond the classroom proved to be a useful tool for Drewids. 

In 1986, students came together and formed the Drew Anti-Apartheid Movement. The group held the first physical protest against the administration in April of that year. “The Drew Community has been patient, but you still haven’t listened. Now we’re taking another step,” a representative of the Anti-Apartheid group told The Acorn in April of 1986. Nearly a decade after the first call for divestment, the Board of Trustees failed to comply with the community’s ultimatum. In response, 65 students lined the entrance of the Board of Trustees meeting. The protesters maintained the University president’s support. Drew students refused to let the Trustees “turn a deaf ear to the majority of the Drew Community— students and faculty, black and white— who favor divestment” and promised that if the Trustees continued to ignore the calls for divestment, they would “act by publicly confronting them and pressing them to do so.” 

The Trustees failed to act and so the students kept their promise. The protests continued from there. The pressure intensified further. In October 1986, the Drew Anti-Apartheid Movement held another silent protest mere days before they marched on Mead Hall. Still nothing. In the Spring of 1987, students set up an “apartheid shanty” in front of the University Center (now the Ehinger Center) to physically display their frustration with the lack of the Trustee’s progress by taking up space at the center of campus. Once again no quick change came to fruition. 

With persistence, the movement carried on. The protests reached their high water mark in February of 1989. Despite the cold, over 100 students and faculty gathered outside of the Great Hall as the Board of Trustees convened inside for their annual budget meeting. As it happened, news crews were on campus to report on Thomas Kean’s new appointment as Drew’s University President. Because of this happenstance, the protest made ABC Channel 7 News and state newspapers, furthering the reach of Drew’s call for Divestment. 

In 1990, The Drew Anti-Apartheid Movement protested once more. In February, 70 people rallied outside of the Great Hall before bypassing campus security officers and entering the building to confront the trustees with their chants and calls for divestment. Following the student’s removal from the space, the protesters formed a human chain around the entirety of the building and continued chanting. The entire trustee’s meeting was accompanied by the voices of Drew’s students taking a stand against apartheid. 

Unlike before, the newly appointed Kean, while supporting the protester’s sentiments, did not support their methods. He found such disruptions unproductive. However, Kean’s agenda was supportive of divestment. Kean was the first governor to completely divest a state from its financial ties to South Africa. However, the students present remained bitter about the Trustee’s slow progress toward divestment and promised to keep up the disruptions until Drew divested.

Good news arrived in November of 1990. The Trustees arrived at a compromise with the students and faculty of the Drew Anti-Apartheid Movement and broadened Drew’s divestment policy. The new policy divested about 1.5 percent of Drew’s assets from South Africa. One professor active in the movement, Fred Curtis, attributed the success to “the continued struggles of the Drew Anti-Apartheid Movement and the willingness of the trustees to listen.” The decade-long fight for Drew’s divestment ended in success. 

The lessons learned from the struggle for divestment in Drew’s past are especially pertinent today. Over the past year protests on college campuses have grabbed hold of national headlines. Students calling for divestment, ceasefires and an end to genocides around the globe are acting in the decades-long tradition of campus activism. Students here at Drew came together to face some of the most pervasive geo-political challenges of the 20th century. Using the right to press and protest, Drewids, like students across the United States, have joined global movements and contributed in a small but mighty way to challenging injustice. Over the past year, Drew’s students have made it clear that they intend to follow in the footsteps of the students who came before them.

In moving forward, it is necessary to preserve the college campus as a place where students can not only absorb academic lessons but also learn about how to be civically engaged within the realm of their constitutional rights. Practicing skills such as community organization, facilitating respectful dialogues and partaking in protests peacefully are beneficial for Drewids, both during their time in the Forest and beyond. However, Drew can only be a productive learning environment that allows students to thrive if the administration allows room for such actions to take place.

Jocelyn Freeman is a senior double-majoring in history and English with a concentration in creative writing, as well as minoring in Chinese.