Have You Heard From Johannesburg?
Story Five The Other Side Of The Rubicon [1965 - 1988]
The theme of the fifth story is money: how a grassroots movement cuts the South African government off from the taproot of its success, its sustaining financial connections to the West. Citizens all over the world, from employees of Polaroid to a General Motors director, from account-holders in Barclays Bank to consumers who boycott Shell gas, all refuse to let business with South Africa go on as usual. Faced with attacks at home and growing chaos in South Africa, international companies pull out in a massive exodus that helps to undermine the apartheid system. It is the first international grassroots campaign to use economic pressure to bring down a government and it succeeds in economically isolating apartheid South Africa.