LOGOS The case against the South African boolc boycott

"^ Tony Hooper Fohowing the passage of the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 in the United States, American pubhshers and booksehers were threatened with the loss of substantial domestic accounts if they continued to seh books and other educational material to cus­ tomers in South Africa. The immediate result was that those with book businesses in South Africa sold them to local buyers, while others stopped Educated in Zimbabwe, South Africa exporting books to South Africa. This is one of the and the United States, Tony Hooper few occasions in the history of the book when pub­ is a career librarian, having held lishers have applied a trade boycott to an entire country, out of abhorrence for that country's posts in Harare, Pretoria and domestic pohcies. Pietermaritzburg before assuming This action was not confined to US deal­ his present post as Director of ers and pubhshers. The Danish government, for libraries at the University of Cape example, also passed a law (subsequently Town in 1980. He was President of repealed) prohibiting trade with the Repubhc of South Africa and Namibia. Libraries in South the South African Institute for Africa were inundated with letters from trading Librarianship and Information and exchange partners ah over the world cutting Science from 1984 to 1986, and is off contacts. Some writers were apologetic. Most a member of the Board of the South were polite. They had decided not to trade with African Bibliographic and any South Africa book dealer, hbrary, university or school. The boycott was applied irrespective of the Information Network. political stance of the institution being subjected to it. Some pubhshers reported that members of their editorial boards had threatened to resign h trade with South Africa continued. Parcels of books which did get through often had anti-South African slogans written on them by packers or handlers in their countries of origin. As a statement of censure and as a politi­ cal act by independent, autonomous trading competitors, the academic boycott of South African institutions must be unique. How, one wonders, can it be reconciled with the fundamen­ tal ethic upon which most publishers would agree—that the free flow of information and ideas is the best way to ensure evolutionary and demo­ cratic change? The tension created by the choice

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