Raisin Bran and Other Cereal Wars

Reagan was President of the U.S. at the time and he strongly supported the efforts of the companies to stay in South Africa. However, he was undermined in the Senate not only by Democrats but by Republican leadership as well. It was the activity in the House of Representatives, however, that propelled Kellogg to take on a large role in the effort, much larger than Kellogg’s relative South African presence. The Congressional Subcommittee on African Affairs was chaired by Democrat Howard Wolpe from the Third District of Michigan. The District included the corporate headquarters of Kellogg and the Upjohn Company (now part of Pfizer). Dr. Ted Cooper, CEO of Upjohn, was as hell-bent as Bill LaMothe about staying and conducting business in South Africa. Howard Wolpe was a leading, if not THE leading proponent of divestiture. An African expert, his political opponents claimed that he cared more about the third world then he did the Third District. He was as adamant in his position that the companies should leave, as Bill LaMothe and Ted Cooper, CEOs of the two biggest non-government employers in the District, were that they should stay. Sure enough, LaMothe and Cooper decided they wanted a one-on-one with Wolpe to discuss the situation and asked me, along with Ed Greising, my Upjohn counterpart in D.C., to set up a meeting. Ed and I knew there would be no good outcome from this confrontation, but it was pointless to argue with two determined CEOs. We were to organize the collision, let the wreck occur, and then pick up the pieces. Bill LaMothe, Dr. Cooper and I boarded the Kellogg Falcon jet for the one-hour flight to D.C., where we met Ed for the trip up to Capitol Hill. There was not a lot of small talk. When we arrived at the office, we were told by LaMothe and Cooper they wanted to meet alone with Wolpe, so Ed and I stood outside the office in Wolpe’s Chief of Staff, Marda Robillard’s, cubicle. The men shut the door to the office and the shouting started quickly. Clearly, these typically thoughtful, low-key individuals had adamant views. Marda looked at us and we looked at Marda, all thinking about those issues and politics other than South Africa where we needed Howard and he needed Kellogg and Upjohn. It was a head-on collision, parts everywhere and few pieces left to pick up. When Joe Stewart, my boss and Vice President of Public Affairs, Scott Campbell, General Counsel, and I began going to South Africa to confirm the company directives were being enacted and enforced, we were just another U.S. company participating in the Sullivan Code. Our role would increase dramatically, through a combination of Bill LaMothe’s leadership, our location in the Third Congressional District of Michigan and our support for Christopher Dlamini, the soft-spoken South African union leader at the Kellogg plant. Our corporate presence in Howard Wolpe’s District was noted at the highest levels of the South African government, which gave us great leeway to do things other companies might not even attempt. We were the first to recognize a black trade union, led by Christopher. Such recognition was against South African law, but the directive from headquarters was that Kellogg was going to treat its employees at the plant in Springs just as we treated our employees at the Omaha, Nebraska; Memphis, Tennessee or Lancaster, Pennsylvania plants, regardless of South African segregationist laws. This was fine in theory, but the result in a country with an insurrection/revolution under way was quite profound. Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was the Chief of the Zulu nation, founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party and leader of KwaZulu, the territory set aside for the Zulu people. He was a controversial black leader. Fiercely anti-communist, estranged from the African National Congress (ANC), but most importantly for our purposes, opposed to the divestiture of the U.S. companies. His support for our position was critical as we attempted to fight legislative efforts in D.C. to require divestiture. We had met with him numerous times in KwaZulu and even had hosted a dinner for him in Georgetown with a group of American CEOs. The meetings were meant to shore up his support, as a major black leader, for our refusal to leave. Our last meeting with him turned out to be clearly the most memorable. Oscar Dhlomo, Chief Buthelezi’s top aide, met Scott Campbell and me in the lobby of a hotel in Durban, South Africa. As we entered the elevator to Chief Buthelezi’s suite, Oscar casually mentioned that there was some media in attendance to cover the meeting. I thought to myself, this is not good, but we can handle this, maybe some local press. As the elevator doors were about to open, I asked exactly who “the media” was, to which Oscar responded, “60 Minutes.” Holy shit. Lights, Camera, Action! Sure enough, there stood a cameraman from 60 Minutes filming us as we walked off the elevator. The filmed conversation with the chief was vacuous, but I will never forget Scott as we sat in the Johannesburg airport the next day waiting to board the flight to return home, telling me there were three good things about our upcoming appearance on 60 Minutes. I asked him what they were and he replied, “First, we’re landing in New York City where there are the most want ads in the country” (implying our need to look for a new jobs); second, “I’ve fired a lot of people at Kellogg and we fire people great.” I asked what the third good thing was, to which he replied, “I’m senior to you, so I have to call LaMothe and you don’t.” Yes, that was a good thing for me. Christopher Dlamini was many things to many people. To the South African government, he was a terrorist and a communist. To the African National Congress (ANC), he was a freedom fighter. As far as Kellogg was concerned, he was our union leader of the plant in Springs, President of the Coalition of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and politically engaged, which meant he had a target on his back. Kellogg was worried about Christopher’s safety, since this was a time in South Africa when state security forces would abduct “terrorists” from the townships, never to be seen again, and sometimes “accidents” would occur in which the individual “fell out of a window,” or “committed suicide.” Our concern for him was justified. In early November 1994, I got a call from the Managing Director of Kellogg in South Africa telling me Christopher was missing. We assumed correctly that the security forces had taken him from his home in Kwa Thema, the township in which he lived. He had been arrested under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act and taken to John Voster Square, an infamous prison/detention center at which, for unknown reasons, prisoners had a propensity to fall out of windows and fall prey to similar accidents. Christopher was in great danger.