Word: mcwhirter
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...situation struck Bureau Chief Bill McWhirter, whose regular post is Johannesburg, in a different fashion. A man who has covered rebellions that have erupted from Northern Ireland to the Philippines, McWhirter says that the Iranian uprising was unique for him. His explanation: "Other revolts I've written about have been movements with defined goals and tactics. Here I think we are witnessing the absolute birth of a movement, a spontaneous outpouring of united resentment without any direction agreed upon, except for an Iran without a Shah...
...Vote!" Mobile polls were transported to practically every village in Namibia, the resource-rich, population-poor (about 1 million) stretch of desert known as South West Africa that South Africa's white regime has ruled as a protectorate since 1920. Yet the result, reports TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter, was about as real as the mirages of the Kalahari sands that stretch for trackless miles across Namibia...
TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter made a survey of 60 U.S. firms, to which he submitted a detailed questionnaire delving into pay scales, working conditions and advancement opportunities for blacks and coloreds. He also visited plants and spoke to nonwhite workers in their communities. According to his findings, Ford deserves top marks for doing away with the most noxious symbols of apartheid. The company regularly consults nonwhite employees on plant problems and even recognizes black unions; though such unions are not specifically prohibited, black organizing is effectively blocked by South Africa's labor code, which excludes unionized blacks...
...should they. In South Africa itself, such a withdrawal is a strategy favored mainly by some white liberals and middle-class black activists. Though they often talk pullout in public, the black militants within the labor force are far more pragmatic in private. A black union leader told McWhirter: "I would say companies should withdraw. But if they did, it would be death...
...realistic course is for American business to stay in South Africa but to use its influence more effectively to bring about change. Despite pronouncements about being committed to ending apartheid, too many U.S. companies engage merely in tokenism. For example, in none of the 60 plants visited by McWhirter was a copy of the Sullivan Code easily available to nonwhite employees. Many local managers have moved too shyly and slowly to remove the most reprehensible barriers of apartheid and to advance nonwhites. But home offices could order their subsidiaries to act more forcefully. That is precisely the solution advocated...