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Bureaucrats of Liberation Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2024
“It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.Introduction
By the late 1970s forays into South Africa had left the Lawyers’ Committee vulnerable to criticism that it had moved away from its mission to help challenge and change the US Bar. Once comprised primarily of liberal white lawyers, the Project's membership lists by the early 1970s contained an increasing number of young African American attorneys. These adults had witnessed the 1950s and 1960s as children. And the struggles continued. Despite South Africa's so-called “decade of peace” between the Rivonia Trial and Black Consciousness, internal resistance movements regrouped in ways that soon became evident to the Americans critiquing humanitarian strategies. As liberation movements continued and stepped up their efforts at internationalization, John Vorster's regime spent much of the mid- to late 1970s launching violent assaults on South African protestors.
Moderation and radicalism
With decolonization—at least politically—unfolding, activist Americans and Europeans felt the lack of “relative clarity” on how best to combat racism. In the midst of this, the Project, ACOA and affiliated groups continued to press for sanctions, increasingly recognizing the need for a renewed marketing strategy. George Houser lamented to his board in 1975 that:
ACOA is confronted with a critical situation. At our forthcoming meeting we will be dealing with plans and a budget for 1976. But we should not go into next year without taking a careful look at where we are and where we are going. We need a new definition of the struggle taking place within Africa and our place in relationship with it … When ACOA was founded in 1953, the issue we were relating to was relatively simple, at least it seemed at that time. There were clearly definable “good guys” and “bad guys.” The “bads” were the colonialists and the white minority—and those who supported them. Although the simplicity of the issue did not remain constant, the question of a role for ACOA was never questioned or challenged.
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