Echoes of Apartheid: The Case for Tesla Divestiture

Posted on | March 6, 2025 | 4 Comments

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Mike Magee

For aging Boomers, it is impossible not to hear echoes of Apartheid re-emerging with force 3/4 of a century after the battle for social justice here and in far away lands was fully engaged. The Musk assault, disguised as “efficiency” is little more than stealing money from the poor to give to the rich, and widens an already extraordinary income gap.

The assault is large enough to draw condemnation from a dying Pope Francis, forced to remind Trump, Musk and their enablers of the historic Jesus and the tenets of Liberation Theology.

Our college years in the 1960’s were accompanied by chaos and crisis, and guided by fundamental Judeo-Christian values. My college, the Jesuit-led Le Moyne College, was activist to its core. The movement was championed by two priests, brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan. With the assassinations of JFK, his brother Robert, and MLK;  LBJ’s Great Society legislative battles; the Civil Rights movement;  and the Vietnam War,  America was literally on fire at the time. 

It was during this decade as well that a largely student-driven movement emerged to oppose Apartheid in South Africa and rapidly spread worldwide. A seminal feature of that movement was mass education and demonstrations with a goal of creating economic pressure on the leaders of South Africa by divestiture of all stocks and investments that benefited the nation.

Elon Musk, born and bred in Pretoria, South Africa on June 28, 1971, is more than a little familiar with that history. In fact, Silicon Valley, where Musk would eventually accumulate his massive wealth, is also the home to Stanford University, a site of great importance to the Apartheid movement and the battle for human justice. More on that in  a moment.

The economic battle against Apartheid would be waged unabated for over two decades, reaching a head on college campuses in the late 1970s. The explosive growth of protests followed the Soweto Uprising, a notorious event in the Soweto Township outside Johannesburg in June, 1976. South African police opened fire on children demonstrating. The riots that followed lead to a stream of horrendous killings including the murder of the South African Student Association leader, Steve Biko, while in custody.

But it was a sit-in, staged by Stanford students to protest Apartheid, that redefined the struggle by focusing on the use of university divestiture to deliver an “economic punch” to the ruling minority.  

A decision made by the Stanford Board to oppose a Ford Motor Company stockholder’s proposal to withdraw operations from South Africa provided the trigger. Stanford at the time held 93,950 shares of Ford Stock. In response to the inaction, the Stanford students launched a sit-in (captured by the Stanford Daily student newspaper below) inside the Old Student Union Building at 1 P.M. on Monday, May 9, 1977. When they wouldn’t leave five hours later, 294 students and faculty were arrested including the daughter of the U.S, Secretary of Labor, Jill Ann Marshall.

Six months later, after repeated demonstrations and disruptions on campus, the Board issued a statement that each of their trustees held a “deep aversion to the practice of apartheid”, and adopted a “South Africa-related ethical investment policy.” Still it took until 1985 for the university to “create formal investment policies that explicitly set out guidelines for investing in South Africa-related companies.”

The weight of the world’s economic-induced isolation did eventually prevail. Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years of imprisonment, and soon united in his efforts with President F.W. de Klerk to achieve universal suffrage. Together they shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. And a  free election followed one year later.

Many of us today, in our 70s and 80s, once again feel the familiar strains of suppression and oppression in the behavior and actions of Musk, as he toggles emotionally between South Africa, the Silicon Valley, and Washington. 

Violence is once again in the air, along with intense greed, cruelty, subjugation, and the targeting of the economically oppressed majority. Oligarchal and super-aggressive, sadly there is nothing new here. Musk’s child-like behavior obsesses on a “super-hero” world and visions of Mars as he ravages the inhabitants of Mother Earth.

Given his life origins and path, might he too respond to intensive economic isolation? And this time it is not Ford, but Tesla, that is front and center.

Musk owns 13% of Tesla stock (valued at $120B on March 6, and down to $104B since this campaign began)) which accounts for roughly 1/3 of his total wealth. His profiteering with Trump is obvious, visible, and accelerating. A Tesla Divestiture could be  the most likely way to “deliver us from evil” as it did with South African apartheid on April 27, 1994.

Want to help? 3 easy steps and then one more.

1. Trade it in. If you own a Tesla, trade it in for another brand now.

2. Check – Do you or  your organization own Tesla stock in any form?

3. If yes, organize a teach-in, to explain Divestiture (as in SA Apartheid), its’ purpose and utility.

4. Circulate and post an online petition to ask your organization to divest of all Tesla holdings.

. . . and one more, Copy and Share this post with all your contacts. 

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