Randall Robinson : Keeping Africa on the Foreign-Policy Front Burner

Africa remains the unknown continent. Most Americans know it only through TV news images of wars and famines--and Randall Robinson demanding reform in South Africa, Somalia and other nations. As the executive director of TransAfrica, the national lobbying group he founded in 1977, he fights to push U.S. foreign-policy support for democracy, human rights and economic reform in Africa and the Caribbean. A Harvard Law graduate, he takes aim in Washington with his encyclopedic knowledge of Africa. He presses no matter who is in the White House.

Political reform is his priority, but he also pays attention to poverty and the AIDS epidemic sweeping parts of Africa. The disease killed his brother, Max, the nation’s first black network anchor.

A forceful, yet dispassionate leader, Robinson is probably best known for his protests at the South African Embassy nearly 10 years ago. He and thousands of black and white Americans, including many celebrities, demanded the release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of apartheid.

Mandela counts Robinson among his friends. So do Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones, Jesse Jackson, Bryant Gumbel, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and a host of others expected to attend TransAfrica’s annual foreign-policy conference and dinner next weekend in Washington. During the celebration, Robinson will dedicate TransAfrica’s new national headquarters, which will house the Arthur R. Ashe Jr. Foreign Policy Library and Resource Center.

Ashe marched with Robinson to demand reform in South Africa. The late tennis champion also protested against U.S. policy in Haiti. Both men were arrested in these demonstrations. They also shared a hometown, Richmond, Va., and a childhood marred by apartheid, American-style--racial segregation.

Growing up in Virginia, Robinson attended historically black Norfolk State College and Virginia Union University, with an army stint sandwiched in between. After Harvard, he did legal aid work before tackling Capitol Hill.

Tall, gentlemanly and persuasive, Robinson, 51, lives in Washington with his wife, Hazel Ross-Robinson, preschool daughter Khalea and teen-age son Jabari. His daughter Anike just graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta.

Question: You’ve been a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa. What do you expect from the Clinton Administration?

Answer: The Clinton Administration has two basic responsibilities: to remedy the problems visited upon Africa over the last 30 years, largely as a consequence of Cold War policies and imperatives; and to support democracies that African nations are putting into place of their own volition.

The American policy over the last 30 years toward Africa has been driven by two forces: the imperative of Soviet containment and race. We’ve never cared much about Africa, not nearly as much--by comparison--as we’ve cared about Europe and other parts of the world.

Q: How does race influence foreign policy?

A: The numbers of refugees we let in, the amounts we spend on them, the priority we assign to country “A” as opposed to country “B.” . . .

We don’t care about democracy in Africa. Historically, we have spent the bulk of American foreign assistance on those countries that we thought strategically important to us during the Cold War. These were the least democratic; the most autocratic, the most corrupt . . .basket cases economically and pits of repression.

Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Zaire, Sudan were the countries over the last 30 years where we spent the vast majority of American assistance, because we didn’t care whether they were democratic or not--as long as they satisfied the sole criterion for American support: They were anti-Soviet . . . . Only one of the leaders was elected--Daniel Arap Moi in Kenya--and just once. The rest were unelected and destructive of their societies, and we gave them the wherewithal to do it . . . . We’ve given many times more for tyranny in Africa than we have for democracy in Africa . . . .

Q: President Clinton recently recognized Angola--

A Now that we have recognized Angola, we have got to help Angola . . . another country that is a victim of the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

On the other side of the score, there are some 20 African countries that are democratizing of their own volition. It’s not easy for them to implement economic and political reforms at the same time. Zambia’s having a tough sledding of it. It’s not easy for Namibia . . . for Benin. We have to give these countries our unalloyed support. We have to demonstrate to Africa that we care as much about democracy in Africa as we do in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Q: Does U.S. recognition of Angola shore up that fledging democracy?

A: It’s a symbol but, unfortunately, in the near term, not very much else. We fought a proxy war against the Soviets in Angola that cost them 400,000 lives out of a population of 9 million people over the last 10 years. We and South Africa supported Mr. (Jonas) Savimbi. The Soviets took the other side . . . . Most Angolans have never known a day of peace. It has destroyed the country.

Angola had elections, finally, as a consequence of negotiations . . . . Mr. Savimbi lost and immediately went back to war and seized 70% of the country . . . .

Q. Secretary of State Warren Christopher gave his first speech on Africa on May 21. He promised the Administration would provide strong support for the democracy movements and free markets. What is your opinion of his speech?

A: It was a good speech, but the Administration took far too long to recognize Angola. It has no policy to date of any consequence on Zaire. Mr. Mobutu Seso Seko stands between the people of Zaire and a democratic outcome. He refuses to leave, and the Clinton Administration has declined to respond to his refusal to step down. We’ve got to put teeth in that policy.

We haven’t signaled presidents like Frederick Chiluba in Zambia our support by inviting them to visit the Oval Office. Leaders from all over the world have been there--but no one from sub-Saharan Africa. The speech is fine, but it doesn’t go far enough. We need the policy behind it, and it’s sad that the White House is just getting around to thinking about Africa.

Q: Is Angola another Somalia?

A: It could well be if this war rages on. All over Africa, where we’ve seen these wars fought over the last 30 years with weapons supplied by the United States and Soviet Union, we have seen famine and starvation as partners to war . . . .

Sudan may even be worse than Somalia. Although media has paid little attention to it, the Sudanese government is selling southern Sudanese into slavery in Arab countries. All manner of torture and starvation are visited upon the people of southern Sudan by the government.

Again, it was Africa’s great misfortune to come on stream as independent countries during the Cold War. They never had a chance to put in place stable democratic governments, because if the United States wasn’t supplying arms to one side, the Soviet Union was . . . .

Q: Did the U.S. leave Somalia early?

A: No. The transition has been properly made. There are going to be 28,000 U.N. troops there--of which 4,000 are going to be American. This peacekeeping effort will cost a billion-and-a-half a year. I expect the United Nations force will be in there for two years.

There has been an agreement to have an interim executive council of 74 people, of whom 15% are expected to be women, to run the country while negotiations proceed for a permanent solution. Starvation has virtually stopped . . . The warlords have come to understand that they would be better served to behave as politicians . . . . The country has undergone a constructive change . . . .

Q: What should the U.S. do to encourage democracy in South Africa?

A: In South Africa, we’ve got to make sure Mr. (President Frederik) de Klerk understands that we expect that promises will be kept. The first promise is to see installed, by midyear, a transitional executive council that would put the African National Congress in government in coalition with the National Party. . . .

Beyond that, to make this work, we have to appreciate the kind of economic dilemma that South Africa faces. South Africa is mired in the worst recession in eight decades: 50% unemployment in the black community--official figures--so the real figures may be much higher; 10% in the white community . . . . There’s a major slump in that economy . . . . At the same time, they’re going to have to close these enormous yawning disparities between blacks and whites.

So this process of reform in South Africa is, in the first part, about political democratization. But more meaningfully, it’s about pursuing economic parity. Seven million out of 28 million blacks live in self-erected corrugated-tin shacks that the government describes euphemistically as informal housing. How is that going to be addressed? Where is the money going to come from?

How is South Africa’s transition going to be guaranteed? Obviously, the donor community has a role to play. If we want democracy to take hold and survive the nascent stages, it will have to mean to blacks something more than a change of the color of the government.

Q: Do the sanctions that you and TransAfrica pushed to impose contribute to black poverty?

A: No, they didn’t contribute to black poverty . . . . Blacks always wanted sanctions because they had so little to lose and everything to gain in terms of what this kind of enormous economic pressure would cause in the way of a reaction from the white minority government. And they worked . . . .

But once we have a transitional executive council in place , putting blacks in government hopefully by midyear, then it’s time for those sanctions to be fully lifted .... And it’s time for American and Western corporations to return to South Africa.

Q. Has poverty been alleviated at all in the townships?

A: No. South Africa is in dire straits, particularly in the black community. And there are new troubling complications--the scourge of AIDS , for instance , is a ticking time bomb in South Africa . And, of course , it’s a disease that not only is costly and painful in human terms but costly financially in treatment terms.

Q: Given all these needs--AIDS, poverty, joblessness, homelessness--can democracy flourish in South Africa?

A: Democracy flourishes where people believe that they have a chance to rise from their current station . . . . (There are) many avenues of approach for a sympathetic Western community to undergird a new democracy in South Africa.

Black South Africans understand that their fortunes will not change overnight but the grace period will not be an open-ended one either. They will expect at the end of some reasonable period of time to see a change in their conditions. And should they not see it, then they will really begin to question the value of the process they’ve undertaken.

Q: Who in America cares about Africa beyond feeding starving children?

A: Certainly, African-Americans care very much and very vigorously through their appropriate institutions. TransAfrica is organized to do just that . . . . The Congressional Black Caucus . . . a major voting bloc in Congress, fought together with us and successfully saved the subcommittee on Africa that had all but been struck down on the altar of austerity .

. . . To the extent that concern is limited, it’s limited by an American parochialism. Americans are vastly ignorant -- and not just about Africa but about anything in the world west of Los Angeles or east of Washington . . . . So most of us had never heard of Somalia before this cropped up, or what the American role had been in Somalia over the last 30 years.