Kobach Letter Against US Divesting From South Africa Amid Apartheid Resurfaces

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Vice Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity attends the first meeting of the Commission at The White House in Washington, DC, July 19, 2017. C... Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Vice Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity attends the first meeting of the Commission at The White House in Washington, DC, July 19, 2017. Credit: Chris Kleponis / CNP - NO WIRE SERVICE - Photo by: Chris Kleponis/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images MORE LESS
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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A decades-old letter Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach wrote denouncing apartheid in South Africa but arguing against U.S. companies pulling out has resurfaced as he runs for governor and helps lead a presidential commission on election fraud.

Questions about Kobach’s past views on racial segregation in South Africa arose in 2012 when he advised then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign, The Wichita Eagle reports. Recently, Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat and Kobach critic, said he had heard Kobach had written a letter on the subject decades ago.

Scrutiny of Kobach has increased in recent months after President Donald Trump appointed him vice chairman of the election fraud commission and as Kobach launched a campaign for the Republican nomination for governor next year.

As Kansas’ chief elections official, Kobach has successfully advocated tough voter identification laws, and critics such as Hensley contend those policies suppress turnout among minority voters. Before Kobach was elected secretary of state in 2010, he gained national attention for advocating hardline policies against illegal immigration.

Opposition researchers from the 2012 campaign accused Kobach of once justifying apartheid, and Hensley said Friday that he had heard a similar incorrect description of the 1986 letter, which was written as the U.S. considered sanctions that were eventually approved by Congress over President Ronald Reagan’s veto. Kobach called the allegation that he had defended apartheid ridiculous.

The Eagle reported that it received multiple tips about a letter on apartheid and searched newspaper microfilm. It found a letter to The Topeka Capital-Journal written by Kobach and published in August 1986, when Kobach was a Harvard University student.

“We must strive to end the injustices of apartheid,” Kobach wrote in the letter, but argued that pursuing divestiture “would be both ineffective and irresponsible.”

He said having American companies pull out of South Africa would hurt its black citizens most and that actions by U.S. corporations were helping to “drive a sturdy nail into the coffin of apartheid.”

“Disinvestment is tantamount to washing our hands of the issue and turning our backs to the chaos we cause,” Kobach wrote.

Kobach told the Eagle that he became interested in South Africa because apartheid and the movement to end investments there were big issues on the Harvard campus. Apartheid ended in the early 1990s.

Kobach said he already was politically conservative and said the debate to him showed “how campus liberals often argue for policies that make them feel good superficially but actually make the problems worse.”

Kobach wrote his senior thesis at Harvard about how businesses in South Africa had become extremely politicized, basing it in part on research he conducted during a 1987 visit and publishing it as a book in 1990.

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  1. Hasn’t a clue on how protests work in 1986, 1990 and 2017

  2. Kansas
    Kris
    Kobach

    Say no more…

  3. Have fun in the barrel, dickhead.

  4. “He said having American companies pull out of South Africa would hurt its black citizens most…”

    Ford sold military vehicles, and ratted out anti-apartheid union members, to South African security forces.

    IBM and Burroughs sold PCs, software, and training to segregate and “denationalize” people of color.

    They allowed the secret police to build a database of fingerprints and photos for every person in the country.

    And enabled the midnight arrests, disappearances, torture, and wholesale murder of political opponents.

    All of which was stoneage, given the Net, supercomputers, drones, CCTV, and geolocation tech nowadays.

    In other words, what Trump and Kobach have at their disposal…

  5. Strikes a nerve. I was fairly deep into this issue in college, as I suspect many here were. And this was the standard line of tripe spewed by every apologist who was neck deep in Apartheid; and, of course, a Reagan Administration that somehow saw the minority rule that was radicalizing a majority as a bulwark against communism.

    It’s basically an argument that Free Market Fairies would make it go away if we just gave them more time. A Kansas fave, as best I can tell.

    Call my crazy, but I’m willing to the words of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s on whether it helped or hurt over the likes of Kobach and the Reagan Administration.

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