Skipping Safari, Lawmaker Hunts for Trade

Small in stature, Ed Royce is used to being the shortest guy in the room. But coming from Orange County and serving in the GOP-controlled Congress, he is rarely the lone Republican.

Yet that’s exactly where the Fullerton legislator stood amid the 16-member congressional delegation that trekked across Africa this spring, along for the ride on President Clinton’s historic mission. Much of the time, he was the only white man in the group as well.

“Our pigment helped a little bit,” Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.) laughed at a public hearing last week where most of the audience, like Payne, was black. “He looked a little dehydrated,” Payne said of Royce. “We tried to shield him and put hats on him and protect him from the sun.”

What’s a guy like this doing in a place like that?

It’s the economy, stupid.

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In the African tapestry of red, gold and green, the onetime Cal State Fullerton business major sees mostly green. U.S. exports to the continent last year totaled $6 billion, Royce repeats like a mantra, more than with the former Soviet Union.

“You walk from West Berlin to East Berlin, and you see the difference--you used to see the difference--it was such a stark example of how market economies work and planned economies don’t work. You see the same in Africa,” Royce said as he chatted in his Capitol Hill office, sleeves rolled up with his elbows on knees. “A few generations ago, it was Europe. Now it’s Asia. The future is in Africa.”

With a motto of “trade not aid,” Royce in March shepherded through the House the African Growth and Opportunity Act--a massive bill that would radically alter relations between the United States and sub-Saharan countries. It is pending in the Senate.

In the last 14 months, the new chairman of the congressional subcommittee overseeing Africa has convened 17 hearings on everything from emerging financial markets to corporate bribing of government officials. A year before joining the president’s trip, he led a bipartisan mission abroad, touching down in Kinshasa as the Democratic Republic of Congo was born out of the former Zaire.

It’s a surprising portfolio for a conservative from the suburbs of Disneyland who was recruited into politics by a group known as the Cave Men over dinner at a Black Angus. His district is just 3% African American. Africa does not exactly top the list of Orange Countians’ pressing priorities.

It wasn’t Royce’s first choice, either. But a more senior Republican got the gavel in the Asia subcommittee that he wanted. Royce had a staff member with expertise in African affairs, and this was his best chance at a chairmanship. He jumped.

“I think people all have the same dreams, the same aspirations,” he said. “Why should we treat Africa differently than we treat anyone else?”

Exports, of course, are big business in Southern California. Fifty local companies, led by Irvine-based Fluor-Daniel, are trading there today.

“Africa could go either way. It could mean increased terrorism, which would mean increased drug traffic, environmental degradations,” Royce pointed out. “America would not be a better place in 30 years if Africa was in chaos.”

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Royce is all business when it comes to Africa. His eight-day mission a year ago included 35 meetings. Flipping through a photo album from the recent journey, he has no story to tell about the woman in the sarong selling ground nuts and soup--he wasn’t there. It turns out this is the official scrapbook the White House sent over; Royce didn’t take a camera.

There is no kente cloth in Royce’s office; the only scarce signs of his Africa activity are a stone carving that the congressional delegation he led gave him, and a set of brown-and-white ceramic plates. He was there to meet with presidents and parliamentarians, not absorb the local culture.

He didn’t join the Democratic president on safari, but Royce does recall seeing some elephants. He has a collection--three brass, one ivory--of the GOP mascot on a bookshelf in his office.

Although some Democrats--including Los Angeles Rep. Maxine Waters, who leads the Congressional Black Caucus--are concerned that Royce’s “trade not aid” approach may be too harsh for a long-oppressed continent struggling to achieve democracy, many in the African diplomatic community have embraced him, if only for the increased attention he has helped bring to their issues. If he was a bit lonely among the Clintonites on the recent trip, he found kinship in Uganda, where he sat next to Ronald Reagan Oqumu, a twentysomething lawmaker from the northern tip of the country.

“I suspect that the reason they seated him next to me might have been political,” Royce said. “His father was an enthusiast of California Gov. Ronald Reagan. He knew all his speeches. He was from the most remote area of the provinces, but he was a fan of a number of Reagan’s policies. He kept saying ‘peace through strength.’ ”