Standard (Chartered) did not run personal accounts in Britain, so was not vulnerable to a personal (and especially student) boycott.

Huh. *strokes beard*

Informative!

Collective guilt upon all who do no acquiesce!

The boycott was mostly political theater.

My understanding of events is that vast numbers of young people withdrew their savings from Barclays, which spooked them, since they understood that the young college set would be the future wealthy, and this coupled with political pressure led them to divest from SA, which in turn landed a "critical hit" on the apartheid government's ability to borrow, leading to peace talks with the ANC.

in which foreign banks beginning with Chase Manhattan pulled the plug on both public and private lending to South Africa believing the National Party government was going to collapse and the country was going descend into anarchy. (both reasonable assumptions) South Africa has never recovered from the capital flight that occurred in this period.

Because I was. That act of "political theater" gave some activists the will to carry on when there were daily killings, and fifth column activities dividing and conquering.

It said, "the world has not forgotten us."

Much like the U.S., apartheid-era South Africa suffered from an insufferable form of exceptionalism. I will leave my religious theories outside of this discussion, but I heard lots of rhetoric about cities on hills, and not just on Sunday.

The Barclays boycott had the short term effect of increasing the stranglehold of the military state. They scrambled to nationalize the thing amidst economic and political chaos. Actually, they're still in business. But the cost was huge. I witnessed this from a semi-insider position , as my brother and sister-in-law lurched along with the listing ship. They survived.

But it was both pathetic and scary to watch the white power elite throw everything it had at the emerging politically conscious class. If you were white, and if you wanted the change you knew had to come, your best course of action was to lie low. Making a spectacle of yourself on either side was to sign your own death warrant.

It was a scary, exciting time.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/jan/22/apple-america-and-squeezed-middle-class/

Hey, it's a simple economics question why SHOULD I support someone who so openly makes it plain that they do not support OUR future?

After the initial blunt statement that the jobs are not coming back there was one other telling quote:

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Eventually, the orbits of the men overlapped. “I’m not worried about the country’s long-term future,” Jobs told Obama, according to one observer. “This country is insanely great. What I’m worried about is that we don’t talk enough about solutions.”
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Cue the beavis and butthead laughter. We don't talk enough about solutions? This from the man who just flat out said his company's future is OUTSIDE this country.

Another person thought that way as well. I beleive she is quoted by history as saying: "Let them eat CAKE!"