TransAfrica explores new challenges - interview - includes an article on doing business in South Africa - Cover Story

Black Enterprise, August, 1992 by Frank McCoy

A single act can alter history. In February 1990, African National Congress (ANC) President Nelson R. Mandela was released to tumultuous worldwide celebration. Six years earlier, an act of civil disobedience created the momentum to set him free.

That was when the leadership of TransAfrica, the African-American lobby for Africa and the Caribbean, galvanized the worldwide anti-apartheid movement. After meeting with South Africa's ambassador to the United States, TransAfrica Executive Director Randall Robinson, former U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry and former Washington, D.C., delegate Walter E. Fauntroy refused to leave the embassy until Mandela was freed and apartheid dismantled. They were the first of more than 5,000 people to be arrested for peacefully protesting apartheid during the next two years. In 1986, The U.S. Senate overrode President Reagan's veto to impose sanctions on South Africa and an inexorable political and economic throttling of the racist regime. This decision culminated in Mandela's release and his triumphant world tour.

That was then. This is now. Mandela still cannot vote and apartheid is not dead. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president of Haiti, is in forced exile, and Haitian refugees are refused entry to America. The U.S. State Department ignores African states that have embraced democracy years ago, but lavishes attention on European countries that only recently renounced communism. The solution: educate the American foreign-policy establishment and increase the pressure on Congress to take African-American interests seriously.

TransAfrica, now 15 years old, is creating battle plans to gain visibility, influence and respect on behalf of African-American positions on U.S. foreign policy. TransAfrica's Randall Robinson, 51, a softspoken, six-foot, five-inch Virginia Union University and Harvard Law graduate, believes it will take dogged persistence to affect change - but, he'll consider whatever nonviolent tactic necessary to get the job done.

In an exclusive interview, Robinson spoke to BLACK ENTERPRISE about the impact of black America on foreign policy, the creation of political and economic links throughout the black diaspora and how TransAfrica plans to transform itself in the 1990s into a foreign-policy institution that will ensure the black concerns on U.S. foreign policy are not taken for granted.

BLACK ENTERPRISE: In the 1990s, how is TransAfrica transforming itself?

Randall Robinson: TransAfrica and TransAfrica Forum are separate organizations. TransAfrica, which is 15 years old, lobbies Congress and the administration with nontax exempt contributions. TransAfrica Forum, which was formed in 1981, has tax-exempt status and provides the educational focus without which TransAfrica could not do its job. The boards of the respective organizations are interlocked.

BE: Since 1977, TransAfrica has been a leader in the U.S. anti-apartheid movement. Now, apartheid is dying, if not dead. What do you forsee as TransAfrica's role during this decade?

Robinson: TransAfrica is a foreign-policy education advocacy organization. We are, of course, interested in all aspects of American policy that have consequences for Africa and the Caribbean.

While we have received more attention for our activities regarding South Africa than anything else, we divide out time fairly evenly over a range of issues that concern the Caribbean and Africa. We have testified before the appropriations and the foreign-affairs committees in the House and the Senate and the subcommittees on Africa. We have asked for more aid overall to Africa and for less aid to countries with human rights problems and more aid to countries that are moving toward democracy. We have pushed for a cutoff of aid to Liberia, Zaire, Kenya and Malawi.

We are concerned that now, at the end of the Cold War, for the first time foreign policy toward Africa will not be driven by strategic concerns. The aid was never altruistic. Now it is being rethought. We have to fight to keep the United States engaged and supporting democracy in Africa just as we support Russia and the former Soviet republics.

In the Caribbean, we are extremely concerned with the situation in Haiti. We support the restoration of Haiti to a democratic form of government. We are pressing for debt relief in the Caribbean. With the exception of Haiti, and of course the episode in Grenada, the Caribbean has been steadfastly democratic for a long time. We should appreciate those traditions and give support.

BE: Most African-Americans couldn't care less about foreign policy. Domestic concerns rule their lives. How can TransAfrica change this viewpoint?

Robinson: Most Americans are less concerned about foreign than domestic policy. It is not just African-Americans. You don't change policy under the presumption that you must have a majority opinion on your side. In the final analysis, you need to organize a critical mass of people, which is not necessarily the majority of the black community. The majority of the American people could not name one foreign country other than Mexico or Canada. This is not peculiar to black Americans. The issue is how well organized we are at a certain level and how vigorously we can apply pressure on the administration and the Congress to create the foreign policy we want.