Clinton Says Africa Was Neglected by America

Taking a repentant tone on his second day on this continent, President Clinton said Tuesday that slavery was “wrong” and admitted to other “sins” that he said America has committed against Africa.

“Going back to the time before we were even a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade,” the president told several thousand children and local residents in this rural town 20 miles from the capital, Kampala. “And we were wrong in that.”

Clinton’s statement stopped short of the explicit apology for slavery that some African Americans have sought. But it was significant in that this was the president addressing this topic in this place, and, as he noted, “The United States has not always done right by Africa.”

During the Cold War, the United States was so concerned with the Soviet Union that it dealt with African countries based on how they fit in the superpower struggle rather than on more humanitarian criteria, he said.

“But perhaps the worst sin America ever committed about Africa was the sin of neglect and ignorance,” he said. “We have never been as involved with you, in working together for our mutual benefit, for your children and for ours, as we should have been.”

African Americans traveling with the president welcomed his remarks about Africa and history, though some called for Clinton to say even more, especially this year, during which he has sought to call attention to racial dialogue and healing.

Discussing the president’s remarks Tuesday, Randall Robinson, head of TransAfrica, a Washington-based lobbying group that focuses on African and Caribbean issues, observed: “It’s different from speeches of past presidents, so I think it’s significant--but hardly adequate to address hundreds of years of slavery. While others are offered restitution and reparations for lesser crimes, the president does not manage anything but a cryptic acknowledgment.”

Robinson added that he thought Clinton was absolutely correct when he said that the great sin of America toward Africa was neglect. “A shocking number of Americans would believe that Africa is a country,” not a continent, Robinson said. “I think his trip helps to the extent that Americans learn more about Africa.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Clinton’s special envoy to Africa, who is traveling with the White House entourage, said he believes that African Americans will welcome the president’s remarks on slavery.

But what African Americans and Africans really want to see emerging from this trip, Jackson said, is better relations between the nations of the continent and the United States.

“The question is where should we go from here,” Jackson said. “And where we go from here is the move away from slavery and neglect and paternalism and pawns--to partnership.”

Susan E. Rice, an assistant secretary of State, noted that, as an African American, she believes “slavery is largely irrelevant to what we are about here. . . . We can spend the rest of this trip and the rest of our time while we’re in government talking about the past, or we can seize an opportunity to build a better future for American young people and African young people. To me, that’s a no-brainer.”

On his 12-day tour of Africa, the president is trying to reverse America’s past stance toward this continent. He hopes to create a new picture of Africa in Americans’ minds. To that end Tuesday, he visited the Kisowera primary school and was entertained by songs and dances of children in a lush, hilly setting overlooking banana groves.

The topic of the day was education--not famine or warfare or disease.

On Tuesday, he praised Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for his efforts to boost education, tripling spending for schools over three years and increasing teacher salaries ninefold.

School enrollment doubled last year to 5.3 million after Museveni’s government began guaranteeing free elementary education for up to four children in a family--and requiring that families with many children send an equal number of girls and boys.

Museveni, who took over in a coup 12 years ago but since has won an election that outside observers deemed free and fair, has rid the country of many of the human rights abuses of the earlier governments of Idi Amin and Milton Obote and instituted press freedoms and broad economic reforms.

Although Uganda does not have a multi-party democracy, Clinton and other administration officials stressed throughout the day that the country has come a very long way and, like much of Africa, deserves to be treated like a partner of the United States.

“I came here in the hope that the American people would see you with new eyes, that they would see the children dance, see the children learning, hear the children singing and say, ‘We should be part of the same future,’ ” Clinton said.

He also announced a three-part, two-year initiative to help African nations improve their schools, food supply and health care:

* The education segment, which would cost $120 million over two years, would provide teaching materials and computers with Internet access to resource centers across Africa. It would boost teacher training, establish links between African and U.S. universities and improve education for girls, who traditionally get much less education than boys in many African countries.

* The two-year, $61-million nutrition program aims to better distribute existing crops, increase trade and investment in agricultural industries, attack crop diseases and boost access to modern agriculture.

* The effort to reduce malaria, which kills 2 million Africans annually, would focus on a $1-million grant to support a regional center in the West African nation of Mali and boost educational efforts elsewhere.

Meantime, the president’s tour continued to generate excitement among Africans, especially the young with whom he visited Tuesday.

Caroline Nakyeyuae, 14, who was dressed in a school uniform of a white blouse and blue skirt, asked of the president’s swift stop: “Why has he spent only 30 minutes with us? We liked him so much, that’s why we didn’t want him to go so soon.”

Her schoolmate Nicole Sylivia, 17, added brightly: “We’re glad about the $120 million. I like the friendship he is creating between the United States and Africa.”