Economic sanctions can help topple unjust regimes. In South Africa, we have direct experience of this.
This makes it all the more ironic when South African companies invest in countries whose human rights records leave much to be desired or that are occupied by invaders.
Like Tibet.
Gold Fields has dismissed criticism of its tie-up with a company that intends to mine in Chinese-occupied Tibet as “goofy”. But is it?
If foreign investors had dismissed criticism of their investments in apartheid South Africa as “goofy”, it would arguably have taken much longer for us to reach democracy. There is no doubt that the boycotts, disinvestment campaigns and arms embargoes of the apartheid years put pressure on the government of the time and accelerated the transition to democracy
.
The Dalai Lama, hardly a person one could describe as “goofy”, has asked foreign mining companies to consider the ethics of investing in Tibet “at a time in Tibet’s history when ordinary Tibetans have no real say in their country’s development”.
Business and ethics, it is true, do not always go together. The spokesperson for a group of US companies in Africa put it clearly this week when he admitted that some African countries might have dismal human rights policies, but the US demand for new sources of oil would outweigh any concerns for justice.
We’d have expected better, though, from a South African company.
