Overview

The theme of the fifth story of six 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 a General Motors director to average employees of Polaroid, 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 undermines the apartheid system. It is the first international grassroots campaign to use economic pressure to bring down a government.