I just put together the page this past week with a DYK entry making the main page today. I myself am not that familiar with the disinvestment campaign nor the general circumstances surrounding it as I am not South African nor was I alive at the time of this campaign. As such, I am looking for feedback in the following areas:
Is the topic adequately covered? Are there any major aspects of the campaign or its effects that I missed?
Is the article organization sufficient?
General constructive criticism of any nature.
Last, but not least, I am admittedly not the most skilled writer, thus any copy editing help is most than welcome. --
CGM1980 01:47, 8 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Get rid of things like "According to Lisson" and "Knight writes"; this isn't an essay for university (it could almost double as one, though—it smells like university material).
It is organised and written well. Any prose concerns would be largely negligible.
Scrap the criticism section and integrate this into the article itself.
Enlarge the "Effects on South Africa" section. The article seems to be a lot of talk, talk, talk (the campaign) and then we only have a few paragraphs about its actual effects (the economics).
It needs a more global perspective. For example, in New Zealand the New Zealand Insurance (NZI) company was picked by the anti-apartheid movement as one company which invested in South Africa, and some hundreds of people bought a minimum parcel of shares in the company each and then turned up en masse to AGMs to ask awkward questions and move motions for the company to disinvest. The anti-apartheid protesters made up a sizable proportion of the people attending the AGMs and couldn't be excluded because they were shareholders, but they had a tiny proportion of the votes. I think the campaign wound up when NZI sold its South African subsidiary. A similar campaign was waged on South British Insurance. I'd add this myself but I don't know of any reliable sources to cite.
http://unctc.unctad.org/data/e84iia5.pdf mentions these two companies in relation to South Africa, but not the campaign waged in New Zealand. Anti-apartheid organisations in other countries doubtless pursued their own strategies.-
gadfium 04:44, 8 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Found a couple of partial sources:
[1] and
[2].-
gadfium 04:51, 8 June 2007 (UTC)reply