Category: ACAS Review (Bulletin)

As I recall, it was David Wiley’s idea to convene a group of us at a meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA) in, I believe, Houston to discuss what we could do to promote an activist position on African questions. The context was double. On the one hand, the situation in Africa was difficult: deteriorating politics of the countries that had achieved independence (military coups, etc.); and blockage of liberation in southern Africa, aided and abetted by the U.S. government. On the other hand, there had just been the 1968-inspired split among Africanists, with the crisis at the 1969 Montreal meeting of ASA, and the creation of the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA).

We made two decisions right at the start. One was that we would call ourselves “Africa scholars” and not “Africanists.” It was a moment of sensitivity about terminology. And the second was that we wanted ACAS somehow to bridge the split between ASA and AHSA. The way we would do that was twofold: We would hold our meetings neither during an ASA meeting nor during an AHSA meeting but separate from both. And we would have co-chairs at every level, in order that we could draw one person linked with each of the two organizations.

We did this for several years. It didn’t really work. First of all, it was expensive and difficult to hold a separate meeting, and not too many people could come. So, after several years, when the hostility between ASA and AHSA had cooled down, we decided to meet during the ASA meetings, and have been doing that ever since. We continued to have co-chairs, but it lost the element of balancing ASA and AHSA.

For a long time, ACAS concentrated on the issue of the liberation of southern Africa, which seemed the right priority. But once all that was finally accomplished, ACAS had to rethink its role and its activities, which was difficult at first, but has now, I think, been done.

From ACAS Bulletin 81

In 2008 the ACAS Bulletin celebrated its thirtieth birthday. ACAS emerged at a moment when radical African movements were capturing international headlines, inspiring activists around the world, and were firmly opposed by the US government. As national liberation movements in the early and mid-1970s scored signficant victories against white minority and colonial rule, US overt and covert intervention across Africa accelerated. Blocked by traditional academic organizations from supporting and mobilizing on behalf of these struggles for majority rule, progressive scholars of Africa came together to form ACAS.

There were models for such work. ACAS’ origins and early actions followed in the wake of other scholar-activist organizations which had emerged out of the long 1960s wave of anticolonial and anti-imperialist movements. The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), for example, was founded in 1966 in response to the April 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic. The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars was similarly established in 1967 as part of the upwelling of protest against US expansion into Vietnam.

Founded in 1977, ACAS was thus a late arrival to the scene of organized scholar-activism. By celebrating its thirtieth birthday ACAS stands out, however, as one of the few surviving scholar-activist organizations, and one of the few surviving Africa solidarity organizations. Most local Africa-related groups have long since disappeared, while national organizations focused on other world areas have long ago narrowed their work to scholarly analysis and journal production–as in the transition of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars to today’s Critical Asian Studies journal.

To re-read the early years of the ACAS Bulletin is to encounter an exciting period, when the possibility of a new and liberated Africa, and a transformed US relationship with Africa, engaged scholars’ imaginations. ACAS’ aims were stated in the first sentence of its founding 1977 “Draft Statement of Principles”: “We are a grouping of scholars interested in Africa and concerned with moving U.S. policy toward Africa in directions more sympathetic to African interests.” The same first issue of the ACAS Newsletter (later Bulletin) advanced an agenda to promote scholarly analysis of US policy, develop alternative policy proposals, construct a communication network among progressive Africanist scholars, and coordinate with other national and local solidarity organizations.

These goals remained central to ACAS work over three decades. How they have been carried out has, however, changed over the years as three different generations of activists have grappled with US-African relations. The first generation’s focus was openly stated in ACAS’ 1977 “draft principles” statement: “For political and practical reasons, our emphasis for the foreseeable future will be on southern Africa.” This reflected the strength of the southern African movements and the problems they posed for the US government in the preceding few years: Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau had just won independence in 1975 after long guerrilla wars; battles for independence were heating up in Zimbabwe and Namibia; and the 1976 Soweto rebellion presaged a resurgence of resistance inside South Africa and the strengthening of the ANC in exile.

At the same time President Jimmy Carter was moving to impose a solution in Zimbabwe and Namibia that would secure white interests. The first issue of the ACAS Newsletter led the charge against these efforts. As Co-chair Immanuel Wallerstein asked, “What can be done by Americans who think that African liberation in southern is part of human liberation?” The answer: “They can demand that their own government cease supporting the white regimes. But above all they can avoid being lured into the trap of supporting liberal interventionism.” Four senior Africanists and ACAS members (Sean Gervasi, Ann Seidman, Immanuel Wallerstein and David Wiley) jointly penned an article on ” Why We Said ‘No’ to A.I.D,” rejecting a large project designed to support conservative policies on southern Africa. Co-Chair Willard Johnson, in laying out more practical steps for activists in the same issue, nevertheless put quite sweeping goals on the agenda: “We wish to have our foreign relations promote respect for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to advance the liberation of oppressed peoples, and to achieve a more nearly equal distribution of power, productivity and wealth among the peoples of the world.”

These were radical aims indeed and remain so. They reflected the times—and lived experiences. Many founding members of ACAS had been active in and carried forward the sentiments of the 1960s North American and African movements; these were now married to the expectation that Africa’s national liberation movements could deliver a more radical solution to the process of decolonization, neocolonialism, and resistance to US imperial power. Many ACAS leaders had or would teach and work in southern Africa, as would their students who often became, twenty years later, ACAS’ second generation members, co-chairs and executive board members.

Throughout its first two decades of work ACAS remained solidly focused on southern Africa. Members–through the ACAS Bulletin, their own published work, and activity on their many local campuses and communities—sought to unearth US cooperation with white rule while building support for southern African movements. This included, as it had for NACLA, Concerned Asian Scholars, and other anti-imperialist groups, tackling US multinational corporations’ support for repressive regimes, covert US intelligence agencies’ operations, US counter-insurgency and military interventions. It also led to long-term support for radical regimes opposed to apartheid, particularly Mozambique. This research and educational work did not take place in a welcoming climate given the reemergence of Cold War “globalist” foreign policy analysts under Carter, and then policies of “constructive engagement” with white power and structural adjustment that accompanied Reagan’s rise to power.

Offsetting these harsh conditions in the United States in the 1980s were actions inside South Africa which served to boost and expand antiapartheid activity across the US. ACAS members were particularly active on local campuses, where divestment and sanctions campaigns gained ground in the late 1970s and 1980s as revealed in successive issues of the Bulletin. New national campaigns emerged in the early 1980s, led variously by the Africa Fund/the American Committee on Africa, the American Friends Service Committee, the Africa Policy Information Center, the Washington Office on Africa, and TransAfrica (itself founded in the same year as ACAS).

The years surrounding 1984-1986, marked as they were by escalating rebellions inside South Africa, were the high-water mark for the US and worldwide anti-apartheid movement. By 1986 a national network of activists had built such pressure on Congress that it passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act—something long opposed by both the Democratic and Republican parties. It was Reagan’s most significant foreign policy defeat. ACAS and the entire antiapartheid movement felt victory was near, as was well evoked by Co-Chair Jean Sindab in the Bulletin at the time: “This is quite an exciting time for those of us who have struggled so hard, for so long, to bring an end to apartheid and U.S. support for that racist system.” (Bulletin No. 16, Winter 1986:21).

1986 would prove in many ways to be the zenith of the anti-apartheid movement. By the late 1980s ACAS members sensed major, uncertain challenges were coming. Mozambique’s difficult accommodation with apartheid South Africa in the wake of destabilization, the Nkomati Accord (1984), and Samora Machel’s death (1986), along with the region’s and continent’s accommodation with the IMF, signaled that new challenges lie ahead. In a series on “ACAS—Ten Years On” in Bulletin No. 23 (Spring 1988), Co-Chair Immanuel Wallerstein flagged “present ambiguities” and “dilemmas” in the wake of successful divestment and sanctions; John Saul, founding member of the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa, noted the smashing of the “high hopes” surrounding the 1975 victories against Portuguese colonialism, most notably in Mozambique; and James Mittelman pinpointed the challenge of moving beyond targeting individual states and single-issue campaigns. While all called for greater commitment and more rigorous intellectual analysis, a period of difficulty for scholarly-activist work was clearly ahead.

Mandela’s release and the unbanning of the ANC, PAC, and CP in 1990 and the ANC’s electoral victory in 1994 opened up this new era as exiles went home and the ANC took over the reigns of state power. This transformation was propelled further on this side of the Atlantic by the election of Clinton in 1992, and a seemingly much more prominent position for Africa-America and even Africa. Still, as might have been expected, civic and community-based antiapartheid organizations in both South Africa and the US declined. Meanwhile both the ANC and the Clinton administration came to aggressively embrace neoliberal policies.

ACAS itself changed. In November 1992 ACAS reorganized with new Co-Chairs (Jean Sindab and David Wiley), moved from southern Africa to work on the entire continent, and launched a continuing presence in Washington with a paid staff member for the first time (Lisa Alfred). Thirteen “Issue Working Groups” were formed to chart a new vision for ACAS, and a national meeting of solidarity organizations was organized under ACAS auspices (see Bulletins 35, Spring 1992 and 38-39, Winter 1993).

The difficulties were starkly stated in Co-Chair Wiley’s own assessment of the near future (Bulletin 38/39:9-13): geopolitically Africa was falling off the Washington policy map, while economically Africa became subject to unrelenting pressure from the IMF, World Bank and the US. Aid from Northern governments was falling and attention of Western and Japanese economic interests declining. Meanwhile most academic Africanists, Wiley noted, remained “professionally dispassionate, and focused on occupational productivity and advancement, mirroring the turn to self-interest by many Americans in these insecure times” (11). If Africanists had failed so far address the continent’s new realities, ACAS, Wiley argued, should try to do so: “Our major tasks in this period are to struggle understand the new situation in Africa and globally, to explore both those policy issues in Africa that merit our attention in this new period and what needs to be said about them to U.S. policymakers, and to redirect ACAS to become a more effective instrument of change.”

Over the course of the next decade much of the agenda set out in the early to mid-1990s was pushed forward, which stood in stark relief to the collapse of most groups that focused on southern Africa and apartheid. Coverage of continental Africa rapidly expanded, featuring special issues on progressive approaches and debates on democratization, human rights, academic freedom, militarization, and conflict resolution. Coverage of key crisis areas grew as well, from the Congo to Nigeria, from Somalia to Africa/Iraq. Far greater attention was paid to health, women, and political violence, an effort led by Meredeth Turshen who became a Co-Chair in 2001. Greater coordination with Washington groups also took place, and the board and membership became more diverse and somewhat younger.

Amidst all these changes there are also continuities as well with previous periods. One of these was the continuing struggle over the relationship of scholars and the U.S. government, particularly scholars’ work with US intelligence agencies. Another concerned the balance between activism and traditional scholarship. And another challenge continually arose on the reverse side of this equation: between scholar activists and social movements, particularly as movements changed over time.

No issue was more persistent from ACAS’ first days than scholars who worked for or otherwise cooperated with US military and intelligence agencies. By the time of ACAS’s formation, covert and highly repressive intervention by the CIA in Ghana (against Nkrumah), Zaire (against Lumumba and for Mobutu), Ethiopia (to reinforce the Selassie monarchy) and especially southern Africa (Zambia, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa) were widely known. Here ACAS really made a difference, leading efforts throughout the 1980s and 1990s to constrain academic cooperation with military/intelligence agencies and counterinsurgency research. Successive Bulletin items and ACAS campaigns followed an early article by Dave Wiley in Bulletin No. 6 (February 1982).

In the early 1990s the Boren Bill, which later morphed into the National Education Security Program, led to another wave of work to secure African studies centers’ and programs’ adherence to a rejection of intelligence funding. ACAS members provided leadership in spreading and coordinating this effort with other area studies associations. This effort got much harder to sustain after 9/11 and the vast expansion of military and intelligence programs under Bush, when individual researchers and a few programs began to serve rapidly growing military and intelligence programs in Africa. But for more than 20 years ACAS has been a leader, and a successful one, in this area.

ACAS’s relationship with academic associations has proved to be another source of continuing debate. In its earliest years ACAS struggled to maintain its independence from the African Studies Association which had continually distanced itself from any support for African movements or radical critiques of US foreign policy, and had correspondingly come under serious attack from black scholar-activists. Indeed much of the original impetus and continuing support for ACAS was due to its being the home for engaged scholarship and support for African movements and activistsAs the 1980s turned into the 1990s, the balance between scholarship and activist work became more difficult to sustain.

Direct support for African movements such as ANC, ZANU-PF, and FRELIMO waned, while the lure of more professional, dispassionate, and moderate work with government agencies grew. Alternative and more conservative organizations that would alongside the U.S. government and neoliberal agencies also emerged. The most notable was the National Summit for Africa, founded in 2001 through funding from the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation and widely endorsed by leaders of the African Studies Association. Yet premised as it was on greater liberal and US government commitments to Africa, efforts like the Summit had little long-term success in attracting a base membership or effecting policy.

If the demise of the antiapartheid and African nationalist movements stilled activist scholarship and work, new movements in both the US and Africa nevertheless continued to fitfully emerge in the 1990s and the new century. The Afrocentric movement in the US in the late 1990s, resulting in the 1995 Million Man and 1997 Million Women Marches—the largest black nationalist and Panafricanist demonstrations ever held in the United States—renewed interest in Africa on US campuses and communities. One result was the creation of new organizations, such as the Black Radical Congress. The evolution of the ACAS board during this time reflected the emergence of a younger, more diverse generation involved in post-national liberation movement issues, movements and campaigns.

For Africanist scholars the black nationalist renewal was especially notable. It reopened the issue of black representation and support for African liberation in the largely white African studies community, an issue that split the ASA in 1969, and indirectly led to the formation of ACAS itself given the ASA’s adamant refusal to denounce US intervention in Africa and directly support national liberation movements. In its early years ACAS alternated its meetings between the annual conferences of the ASA and the alternative, post-1969 formation of the African Heritage Studies Association. ACAS has also maintained a continual succession of black co-chairs over the years (Willard Johnson, James Turner, Jean Sindab, Al Green, Merle Bowen, Michael West). When white scholars charged in the late 1990s that Africanist academic posts were closed to white applicants, and black scholars protested, it was members of ACAS that organized an open forum at an annual ASA meeting and published the presentations and dialogue in the ACAS Bulletin under the title of the “The ‘Ghettoization’ Debate” (no. 46, Winter 1996).

Many ACAS members also participated in new international movements that grew in surrounding debt, AIDS, the IMF/World Bank, fair trade, and Darfur. None of these revived, however, the degree of interest and coalitions that had existed in the 1970s and 1980s. Even the emergence of new local movements in South Africa in the late 1990s, as elsewhere around the continent, failed to stimulate broad and successful campaigns to link US and African activists. South Africa’s most successful new movement, the Treatment Action Campaign, had many admirers in the North, but few sustained and wide relations with northern scholar activists. In all these areas ACAS members nevertheless worked assiduously to support African colleagues, as successive Bulletins reveal. Still, ACAS’a attempt to seize the opportunities offered by the new movements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have been partial at best.

ACAS has not been alone in facing these difficulties. As the long-time activists and editors of No Easy Victories, African Liberation and American Activists Over a Half Century, 1950-2000 argue in the conclusion of their volume (225-28), support for activist work now faces severe constraints as Africa has been increasingly marginalized in the media, Congress, foreign policy circles, and the world-economy. Beyond access to oil and the militarization of US-African ties as part of the “war on terror,” African-US work has often been narrowed to appeals for charity and humanitarian intervention. Africans in these campaigns are all too easily reduced to hapless, bewitched victims, predatory victimizers, or tribal warriors. For many long-term activists it does indeed seem–despite much current work on individual issues and states–that deepening the support for scholar-activism remains much more difficult than at any time in the past three decades.

Such a bleak assessment should not obscure real achievements and future possibilities. Looking back we can justly celebrate the major contributions scholar activists have made in the struggles against colonialism and apartheid. Looking forward, it may well be the case that too many anomalies exist to hope for–as is so common when old activists meet–a revival of the past paradigm for scholarly-activist work on Africa. The potential for and public visibility of activist work on Africa may not have simply declined; it may have indeed shifted elsewhere. Here in the United States, developments in both the academic and activist worlds may have undercut the principles and frameworks upon which past activity depended.

On the academic side, the scholarly enterprise known as area studies and its Africanist component has increasingly shrunk and fragmented amidst the rise of diaspora, Africana, ethnic, and global studies programs and degrees. This has undercut the potential for continental, Africanist-centered activism. Much higher levels of migration from Africa, including into the higher reaches of US academia, have also served to dissolve the secular missionary role that most white, mainstream Africanists played as interpreters of Africa for the American public. Multiculturalism, Afrocentric student activism in the 1990s, and neo-racist responses to these developments have further shattered the cohesion of the past African studies matrix—as has been so visible in recent years in the emergence of black and continental African directors at major African studies programs and centers (e.g. Berkeley, Boston, Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Yale).

On the activist side, new movements have also undercut the divide between the US and Africa upon which old alliances were created. In part this is the success of the anti-neoliberal debt and structural adjustment movements of the 1990s, which exerted such strong influence in, and have so transformed, what is now tellingly termed the “Global South.” In Latin America and Asia it is clear that the hold of the US and international financial institutions has markedly declined, and that new land, indigenous, and social justice movements are increasingly networked through new technologies across regions, states and continents.

The local expressions of these movements in Africa, including most notably in South Africa, have been equally marked. But as in the rest of the Global South, they have not evolved along the lines of past North-South solidarity, anti-colonial, panafrican or anti-apartheid models. Today’s movements are far more interlinked across the South and have far less visibility and political impact in the North—at least so far. Personal experience and networks remain no less key to transnational organizing of course, but for today’s growing movements these are often constructed outside the North/South lines upon which past solidarity movements flowed.

As ACAS moves toward its third generation, these changes promise to call forth different models of organizing, utilizing new technologies for the dissemination of educational materials and calls for action. ACAS’ new Co-Chairs in 2006, Sean Jacobs and Chris Patterson, have been confronting and undertaking these tasks now, as can be seen in the new web site (https://concernedafricascholars.org), new and action alert items, and recent Bulletins. As these activities show, what has not changed is the need for a continuing radical critique of US policy and of the US’s historic relation with Africa and its diasporas.

There are few signs that an Obama presidency will foster any substantive change in Africa policy given the appointment of Clinton-era veterans such as Susan Rice and Hilary Clinton, who have in the recent past and in their appointment hearings continued to promote Africa’s forced “integration” into the world-economy, the war on terror and Islam, and a priority for military links with Africa through the US military command for Africa, AFRICOM. If there is a new element on the horizon, it is likely to be enhanced charity and the funding of liberal, humanitarian intervention by other forces—in large part a response to their embarrassment in failing to act in Rwanda.

These developments point to the very real need for more and not less activist work by scholars in the coming generation. Over the long run, significant dangers will arise as US financial, commercial, and political power declines, and US power may too easily come to rely upon the ultimate pillar of hegemony–military power. Yet resistance is likely to open up new opportunities as well. As activists in Africa, the Americas, and Asia already know quite well, policies based on neoliberalism and the projection of US power have been everywhere rejected. In the coming conjuncture, this reality will lead to alternative policies and centers of power. For those of us in the United States, these developments are likely to make progressive mobilization more possible and certainly more imperative. The struggle for liberation, for a post-imperial future, remains, as it was in the early days of ACAS, before us.

About the author

William Martin is a past co-Chair of ACAS and currently teaches at Binghamton University.

From ACAS Bulletin 81

The concern about military and intelligence funding of African studies first arose in the African Studies Association in the late 1960s, coming to a head at the ASA’s annual meeting at Montreal in 1969. As a result of alleged intelligence linkages of some ASA members and officers, the association distanced itself from Washington and security agencies of government.

In 1982, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) approached four Title VI African centers to explore their willingness to receive large annual budget supplements in exchange for being on call to develop reports and undefined services. The directors of the four centers consulted and agreed to not accept the funding until they had consulted with the wider Africanist community. After that consultation, they concluded that it was not in U.S. interests to link with the DIA which could compromise their collaborations and linkages in Africa.

In 1991, Senator Boren and the Congress established the National Security Education Program (NSEP), authorized by the David L.Boren National Security Education Act of 1991 (NSEA, Title VIII of P.L. 102-183), providing “…aid for international education and foreign language studies by American undergraduate and graduate students, plus grants to institutions of higher education.” Various area and scholarly associations objected to this act and urged that federal support for language and area studies be routed through the U.S. Department of Education and its Title VI Higher Education Act programs.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the directors of African Studies Title VI centers periodically reviewed their policy about not accepting military funding. In 2001, under challenge from the right, the directors passed a resolution on “Military and Intelligence Money in African Studies” in which they “reaffirm[ed] our previously stated position to oppose the application for and acceptance of military and intelligence funding of area and language programs, projects, and research in African studies.” They continued to note that, “We believe that the long-term interests of the people of the United States are best served by this separation between academic and military and defense establishments. Indeed, in the climate of the post-Cold War years in Africa and the security concerns after September 11, 2001, we believe that it is a patriotic policy to make this separation.” (see below)

The Association of African Studies Programs has supported the Title VI African Studies directors in motions passed in the 1980s, reaffirmed in 2002, and choosing not to review or change that policy in 2006 or 2007. On March 31, 1993, they adopted a position “reaffirm[ing] our conviction that scholars and programs conducting research in Africa, teaching about Africa, and conducting exchange programs with Africa should not accept research, fellowship, travel, programmatic, and other funding from military and intelligence agencies or their contractual representatives – for work in the United States or abroad.” At meetings of the AASP in most years since the mid 1990s and most recently in November 2006, AASP members and Title VI directors have been asked if they wanted to revisit, amend, or reconsider this resolution, and the membership declined to reopen the issue, allowing the 1993 resolution to stand.

A. Text of Resolution by the Directors of Title VI Africa National Resource Centers, 2001

We, the directors of the African Studies Title VI National Resource Centers, at our meeting during the 2001 annual meetings of the African Studies Association, vote to reaffirm our previously stated position to oppose the application for and acceptance of military and intelligence funding of area and language programs, projects, and research in African studies. We note, too, that the African Studies Association has taken a similar stance.

We believe that the long-term interests of the people of the United States are best served by this separation between academic and military and defense establishments. Indeed, in the climate of the post-Cold War years in Africa and the security concerns after September 11, 2001, we believe that it is a patriotic policy to make this separation.

This separation ensures that U.S. students and faculty researchers can maintain close ties with African researchers and affiliation with and access to African institutions without question or bias. Such separation, we believe, can produce the knowledge and understanding of Africa that serves the broad interests of the people of the United States, as well as our partners in Africa. We continue to welcome, in our classes, language training, and programs where we promote knowledge about Africa, all students and visitors from all private and public organizations and all agencies of the U.S. government.

(Passed unanimously November 17, 2001, African Studies Association, Houston, Texas)

B. Text of Resolution by the Association of African Studies Programs (1993)

We, the members of the Association of African Studies Programs (AASP) at our 1993 Spring Annual Meeting, unanimously join the African Studies Association, Middle East Studies Association, the Latin American Studies Association, the South Asian Council of the SSRC, the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, the Association of Asian Studies, the Boards of the Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies, and other scholars in seeking to separate foreign language and area studies in the United States from military, intelligence, and other security agency priorities and programs. We believe that long-term interests of the peoples of the United States are best served by this separation.

Specifically, we reaffirm our conviction that scholars and programs conducting research in Africa, teaching about Africa, and conducting exchange programs with Africa should not accept research, fellowship, travel, programmatic, and other funding from military and intelligence agencies or their contractual representa-tives – for work in the U.S. or abroad. We are concerned especially about the Department of Defense National Security Education Act (NSEA, “the Boren Act”) and the new Central Intelligence and National Security Agencies Critical Language Consortium. We call on our colleagues to abstain from these and similar funding initiatives and consortia of security agencies. These military and intelligence programs violate the integrity of the scholarly process and will hinder our relationships with African colleagues and collaborators, embarrass African universities and governments, and, thereby, decrease U.S. access to scholarly information in African studies.

We also believe that the broader interests of the people of the United States are served best by Africanist scholarship and programs oriented to goals, issues, and regional foci which are determined openly using academic and broader public priorities, not in secret or for the narrower priorities of military, foreign policy, and intelligence agencies.

We are not opposed to U.S. government funding of African studies. Indeed, African studies by far is the poorest of the world area studies and urgently needs an increase of funding for activities in the U.S. and in Africa. Therefore, we urge the U.S. government to increase its funding for African studies and linkages through agencies and institutions outside the security agencies.

(Passed unanimously by all members in attendance, March 31, 1993, Washington, DC and reviewed annually at meetings of the Association.)

C. The Board of Directors of the African Studies Association, which supported the stance of the Title VI directors and the AASP, formalized this position at a meeting at Rutgers University in April 2002, “…voted to support the language and sentiment of the Title VI African Studies Center Directors on November 17, 2001.”

D. Michigan State University Faculty Guidelines for Scholarly and Professional Cooperation with Colleagues in Africa

We, the Core Faculty of the African Studies Center at Michigan State University (MSU), establish the following guidelines for collaboration with African colleagues. These guidelines are offered as a guide to all those from MSU who construct agreements for research and cooperation or who work in Africa, including faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and all persons under MSU auspices or associated with MSU projects and programs in Africa. MSU faculty and students are expected to respect the laws, regulations, and customs of the African and U.S. governments and of funding agencies governing research and administration of projects in Africa, including “human subjects” regulations. These guidelines are not legally binding and do not supersede other MSU, state, federal, or scholarly rules and regulations guiding external linkages and collabora-tion. Rather, these guidelines are an attempt to establish parameters for cooperation and trust, which we want to grow between our university, its faculty, students, and staff, and the peoples and institutions of Africa…..

When we engage in research in Africa, we shall notify our African colleagues of the sponsors, funders, and potential uses intended for the information to be collected. We shall not engage in any research which we know or believe is funded secretly, is likely to be used for covert purposes, or has potentially negative consequences for our colleagues. We shall make every effort to keep all of our research, instructional, and service activities free of sponsorship, direct funding, or secret uses by military and intelligence agencies of all governments. We shall not knowingly engage or participate in projects which could be reasonably construed as sustaining or strengthening the powers of political leaders or states guilty of violations of human rights. Furthermore, we are committed to keeping in the public domain all work completed under any government sponsorship. (Passed unanimously by the Core Faculty of the MSU African Studies Center, 1992)

Introduction

Africa is in danger of being discarded as “the Fourth World,” irrelevant to the global economy, and of being abandoned as hopelessly mired in insoluble problems. The continent has been utterly marginalized on the U.S. policy agenda by the end of the Cold War and by a new domestic fixation in the U.S. electorate. Yet Africa’s human needs are real and its problems are not isolated. Rather they are linked to the world economic recession, a global glut in many African agricultural commodities, and the effects of years of regional militarization.

Never before have the peoples of Africa so strongly needed the support of their friends in the West, and especially in the United States. Food aid is urgently needed in the face of drought and famine. More important is the rebuilding of an indigenous agenda for development beginning with basic human needs, setting aside the simplistic formulae of the modernization models and the Cold War tolerance of minority and repressive regimes. Such an agenda cannot succeed without changes by the wealthy governors of the world economy.

The Clinton Administration does offer opportunities for a fresh dialogue about U.S. policy toward African nations. Despite virtually no attention to Africa during the campaign, the principles of Clinton’s Africa statements merit support: attention to human rights and democratization, reform of development assistance, strengthening of UN peacekeeping efforts, and retaining sanctions pressure on South Africa. It is important to grasp these opportunities in order to respond to the remnants of 30 years of U.S. Cold War policy in Africa including — the rejection of democratic elections by U.S. client Jonas Savimbi, the continued South African ploys to avoid democracy and to foment ethnic strife, the banditry residual from the U.S. and USSR arming of Somalia, the continued support of Mobutu in Zaire and the failure to provide necessary international support to contain the disastrous conflicts in Mozambique, Angola, and Liberia (and its neighbors).

Thus, there is an urgent need for a more articulate and powerful voice in the United States advocating a larger, more compassionate, and serious policy focus on Africa. U.S. citizens must muster support for the future of this sub-continent from which so many of our peoples and so much of our American culture, heritage, and products have been drawn.

This paper calls on U.S. Africanist scholars to mobilize more effectively as part of a broader constituency dedicated to these ends. The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS) has begun a number of new policy discussions to broaden and deepen the attention of U.S. Africanist scholars beyond Southern Africa to the entire continent. Organizationally, ACAS is expanding and re-organizing to respond to the new situation. We hope that these new directions will interest more Africanist scholars in participating in ACAS.

The African Crises and the World System

Like many Third World economies, most of Africa is in trouble. African countries are besieged by debt, further collapse of commodity prices (simultaneous with significant Won in the price of needed industrial goods from the North), devaluation, inflation, unemployment, political upheaval, some bad political leadership, erosion of the environment and infrastructure, food shortages, and massive health problems (the public health diseases of cholera, hepatitis, and meningitis; HIV; and the resurgent six WHO-targeted tropical diseases, especially malaria).

These burgeoning crises are occurring in the context of major structural reorganization of the global system, its economy, polity, and military power. Because of the relaxing of East-West tensions, most of the nations of the South -both government leaders and various political movements within them -can no longer automatically use the Cold War polarities to gain access to aid and support from the big powers of the North. The Eastern European powers have turned to their own crises, and the wealthier West has become largely disinterested, excepting those rare cases such as Somalia in which there is an apparent congruence of public outcry against the famine and the disorder and of U.S. politicos to find a new role for the military.

Despite this geopolitical reorientation away from Africa, we believe that Africa actually is deserving of more, not less, attention. In the 1990s, we have comprehended more than ever before the depth of human heritage and culture that is owed to Africa, especially in the culture of the U.S. and the Americas. We also are more attentive to the many products from Africa which enrich the consumption and quality of life of America.

In recent years, economic attention to Africa has been limited mostly to pressure from the World Bank, IMF, and U.S. for the many aspects of economic structural adjustment and for democratization. These changes can correct some of the distortions of prices, the lack of economic incentives, the high cost of centralized bureaucracies, and the lad of popular participation in some African nations; however, many believe they do not hold the key to — and may even block — addressing the depth and breadth of African economic problems. A large number of African states that are politically fragile have acceded to these pressures.

Even while dealing with these economic pressures, many African nations are offering internal political trans- formations. Democratic elections, multi-party rule, new leadership, and a priority on the basic human needs of the population are taking hold in many places throughout the continent. Despite both these economic and political changes, little foreign assistance or serious political attention from the West has been forthcoming.

Indeed, foreign aid to African countries has been minuscule. In 1990-91, total U.S. economic assistance for the 47 nations of Sub-Saharan Africa only barely exceeds that of Nicaragua and Panama together and totals less than one-tenth of the combined assistance to Israel and Egypt. In the early 1990s, the period of Africa’s most pressing crises, less than five percent ($800 million) went to Africa of the $17 billion total U.S. foreign development aid.

The Waning of Advocacy for Africa in the United States

Africa’s political transformations should create new possibilities for calling on the U.S. to truly support the democratic principles it purportedly seeks in Africa, as was not possible under the Cold War ethos. Nevertheless, at this time of potential new opportunities, interest in Africa has fallen among diverse U.S. publics — mass and elite.

The interest of U.S. politicians has been eroded by Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, the broad perception that apartheid is bound for the rubbish heap of history, and the “donor fatigue” at the seemingly endless parade of new African problems. Distracted by pressing domestic issues of jobs, housing, health, education, and racism on which few victories are being won, even the traditional friends of Africa in the Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus have failed to mobilize effectively on Africa’s behalf, including on emergency humanitarian assistance and conflict resolution. Even some of the liberal politicians elected to the 1993 Congress campaigned on an isolationist platform to “bring our dollars home” to bolster the U.S. economy.

The attention of the Western and Japanese corporate and investment communities has shifted to new opportunities in the Pacific and Europe as U.S. investments and trade with Africa declined since the 1970s. The U.S. foreign policy-making elites, likewise, are riveted to global competition among the economic powers and the transformation of the Eastern Bloc.

For masses in the U.S., attention is focused on declining job and economic opportunities. The concentration of wealth in the Northern Hemisphere. Indeed this decline is paralleled by the greatest concentration of wealth in U.S. history. Many people in this wealthy nation are caught in a new experience of impoverishment, decline in standard of living and quality of life, and the prospect of downward mobility. Ethnic and racial antagonisms are on the rise. As in Europe, this experience of personal insecurity accentuates national chauvinism and myths about the threats of foreign peoples.

The media coverage of Africa available to the mass “viewing market” continues to demonstrate gross disinterest in Africa (with the obvious exception of the images of anchormen — in the midst of U.S. military operations in Somalia). Images of starving African refugees flow into U.S. living rooms, leading most to conclude that Africa is but a caricature of endless problems, bad government, and incompetence — an undesirable continent with which to link and identify. This translates into an inadequate market for good educational and media materials on the continent, small enrollments in many college classes concerning Africa, and the continuing dissemination of gross racial and social stereotypes of the peoples and cultures of Africa.

Most of Africa’s U.S. supporters have failed to mount any effective action on the pressing problems of the continent. Africa’s friends have become demobilized on a broad front — among churches and unions, on the campuses, and even among some Africa-focused organizations. The national organizations with which activist scholars have cooperated on legislative and pressure campaigns (Washington Office on Africa, American Committee on Africa, TransAfrica, and others) are suffering financially and organizationally in varying degrees in the post-Mandela release period. Simultaneously, while many major funders have focused even more of their resources on projects inside Africa, they offer little support for initiatives to build a constituency with a greater voice for Africa in the U.S.

The present political demobilization on behalf of Africa is particularly striking in juxtaposition to the success of the friends of Africa not so long ago. For 30years, key African- American, student/faculty, church, labor, and liberal groups mobilized against apartheid, achieving one of the most remarkable changes in U.S. foreign policy of the century. Building from campus, local, and statewide actions, the divestiture and sanctions movement eventually overwhelmed the President, the State Department, and a great majority within the foreign policy establishment with the Congress’ adoption of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. But after this important national victory, most Africanists and other friends of Africa have failed to maintain their activism on South Africa.

The Role of Africanist Scholars

Where do Africanist scholars fit into this picture? In the domain of mass education and culture, centers of African and African-American studies and teachers in African-American communities are making important efforts to give new attention to Africa’s complex histories and cultures. The resources available for this task from African studies centers are very limited. Probably only four or five percent of the total U.S. public and private budget for foreign language and area studies is spent in research funding for the study of one-fifth of the global landmass with more nations, cultures, and languages than any other world region.

Most academic Africanists, however, remain professionally dispassionate, and focused on occupational productivity and advancement, mirroring the turn to self-interest by many Americans in these insecure times. Younger scholars in many disciplines face more difficult roads to academic advancement than did the previous generation of Africanists. While scholars by and large decry the broad disinterest in Africa, they have not raised an effective voice to demand a U.S. response to Africa’s crises. Even those scholars who are politically engaged are largely geographically isolated and racially divided.

Why has Africanist activism waned? As with other segments of the constituency for Africa in the U.S., it is partly due to the loss of apartheid as a relatively simple target of U.S. support. Issues facing South Africa have become more complex and multi-faceted — democracy, ethnicity, jobs, affirmative action for correcting the discriminatory past, food production, and pent-up demand for social services and economic opportunity. These issues are similar to those confronted by the continent as a whole, and Africanists so far have failed to broaden their perspective or develop any strategy for addressing these multiple issues effectively.

Africanist scholars should be particularly suited for assisting the broader U.S. constituency for Africa to make the transition from focusing on apartheid to the various critical issues facing the continent. Many U.S. academic specialists on Africa have strong sympathies with the particular countries and people they know from their research and collegial relationships. They understand the impoverishment and fragility of the continent caught in a marginal position in the global system. The historic ambivalence in the scholarly community toward economic assistance should be translated into a cogent critique of those programs that hamper development for the majority of the people and strong support for humanitarian and longer-term aid that can be helpful. Scholars with experience in Africa’s environmental issues and problems should nurture the nascent environmental movements and groups in Africa. U.S. scholars should create opportunities for African experts to speak for themselves about the solutions to Africa’s problems and should assist these scholars to acquire the resources they need for their research and communication.

A New Agenda for ACAS

The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS) has embarked on a plan to refocus the political attention of Africanist scholars, particularly among its own membership. Our major tasks in this period are to struggle to understand the new situation in Africa and globally, to explore both those policy issues in Africa that merit our attention in this new period and what needs to be said about them to U.S. policy-makers, and to redirect ACAS to become a more effective instrument of change.

ACAS has identified a number of policy issues to explore and has established Issue Working Groups (IWG) on each to address the problems and to recommend policies to advocate. Several of the IWGs have developed draft papers on their topic, which are published for the first time in this issue of the ACAS Bulletin. Earlier drafts and ideas were discussed at a Consultation held in Washington, D.C. in May 1992and at a one-day ACAS Conference in November 1992. We now encourage discussion and comments from all ACAS members or prospective members as we seek to set our organizational policy course for the months ahead. (Send your comments to the Research Committee listed on the back cover).

In addition, we suggest the following policy priorities for ACAS efforts in the months ahead:

• Support for just and stable terms of economic exchange between Africa and the industrial nations

• Support for sustainable forms of majority rule and democracy in Africa

• Financial and political support for the peace-enforcing, peace-keeping, and peace-making (conflict resolution) activities of a genuinely representative UN, OAU, and other multilateral agencies

• Support for appropriate development that gives primacy to the needs of children, women, and those who are socially and economically displaced

• Continued attention to achieving both non-racial democracy in South Africa and across the continent as well as peace and reconstruction in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and the conflict- and drought-damaged SADCC states

• Increased U.S. attention (research and assistance) to the health crises in Africa (public health, HIV, malaria, infant death, etc.) and the background nutrition problems in Africa

• Debt relief and investment capital for appropriate development work which serves the needs and interests of the common peoples of Africa

• Partnership with Africa to achieve environmental sustainability, based on an integrated social and economic development that does not harm the planet

• More attention to the increasing erosion of academic institutions and the academic capabilities and work of our colleagues in African universities under the assault of structural adjustment programs

• Support for individual African colleagues under attack by repressive regimes

• Proactively building linkages and coalitions with African peoples, especially African academic colleagues, who work for progressive change in the economy, government, and society at all levels of their societies

• As a means of affecting U.S. policy, collaborating with a broad spectrum of North Americans to build a more enduring and effective constituency in support of all African peoples and oriented especially toward the Congress and U.S. foreign policy-makers. To accomplish this, ACAS must address and join the wider U.S. constituency for Africa and especially African-American constituencies.

The Means for Achieving Our Goals

ACAS was formed in 1977 to activate scholars to use their academic skills to analyze U.S. policy toward Africa, to mobilize public critical commentary, and to provide scholarly knowledge and legitimacy for criticism and the alternative policies. ACAS was constructed as well to bridge the separation of scholars working in the African Studies Association (ASA) and the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA).

ACAS has used several means toward this end. ACAS members have testified before Congressional committees and the organization has initiated legislative campaigns on issues including a broad array of Southern Africa concerns, harmful U.S. interventions in Africa (particular1y CIA intervention in Angola), emergency assistance for victims of African drought and famine, protection of individual scholars in Africa, dislodging foreign interests in the Western Sahara, and funding through U.S. military and intelligence agencies—for African studies programs and research. Like many Africa-focused organizations, our focus in the 1970s and 80s was on the southern part of the continent

ACAS members have received regular commentary, information, and action-relevant articles, status summaries of key legislation, and news of the anti-apartheid movement in the ACAS Bulletin. The publications and network provided by ACAS has also given indirect guidance or resources to individual Africanists working on their campuses, Africanist programs and administrators seeking to be supportive of political change, and even administrators inside the government arguing for more progressive policies toward Africa.

The primary arena for communication with the broader Africanist community has been several panels organized by ACAS at the annual meetings of the ASA and twice at the AHSA. The panels, which have regularly been well-attended and well-received, have been on key topics concerning Southern Africa, human rights, repression against African scholars, other struggles in the Horn and across the continent, and the potential uses of defense and intelligence agency funding in African studies. In the 1970s and 1980s, the panels often had liberation movement representatives.

The Issue Working Groups (IWG’s) are a new mechanism to bring several ACAS members together to develop analysis and recommendations on policy issues that we have not previously addressed.

A Strategic Action Plan for ACAS at this Juncture

In light of the growing crises in Africa and the radically altered global parameters, the membership of ACAS made a commitment at its 1991 and 1992annual meetings to seek to achieve a greater impact on U.S. policy-making in Washington by increasing our organizational capacity and our program and by expanding our membership.

ACAS has always been bedeviled by the lack of infrastructure to coordinate its willing membership in mobilizing to influence U.S. policy-makers. Until now, we have operated on a shoestring, partly by our intentional decision not to compete with the Africa lobbying organizations on which we and others rely. Now, when we need to diversify our political foci, we have decided that we cannot make an effective contribution without greater resources and staffing and that we must have an organizational presence in Washington, D.C.

Therefore, we have hired a part-time executive secretary in Washington, D.C., with the hope of eventually enlarging that position to full-time. A new staff person does not substitute for a network of active and informed members, but nor can scholars scattered across the country be effective without consistent information and mobilization.

ACAS has also established a closer working relationship with the African Policy Information Center (APIC), formerly the Washington office on Africa Educational Fund. We will also be coordinating ACAS activities more closely with pro-Africa organizations in Washington, including the Washington Office on Africa, TransAfrica, and other groups such as Africare, Bread for the World. Development Gap, and Africa Development Foundation, and with the American Committee on Africa in New York. We plan to organize several seminars and colloquia on issues of current policy, possibly in conjunction with other actors in Washington. And we will continue to inform and mobilize ACAS members on selected current policy debates in the Congress. In all of these efforts, we will work to expand our capacity to address more diverse political and economic issues of the entire African continent.

In 1993, with new opportunity for Africa in Washington, we invite the wider Africanist community to join us in our effort to transform and expand ACAS. Scholars have a special role to play — in explaining African realities, developing policy recommendations and critique, and adding a certain academic legitimacy to Africa’s constituency in the U.S. We believe that the new direction taken by ACAS in the past 18 months and the commitment of ACAS members to greater participation and financial support have positioned ACAS to more effectively assist scholars to make their unique contribution in the political arena. The problems of Africa which will be solved will be managed by the African peoples and institutions themselves; however, the pressing needs and challenges facing those people of Africa in a radically altered global system surely give us cause to seek a greater impact on U.S. policy.

The author acknowledges the contributing comments and suggestions of Christine Root and William Martin.

Originally published in ACAS Bulletin 38-39 (1993), pp. 9-13

Reprinted in ACAS Bulletin 81

What should Western-based movements do to facilitate African liberation? There are several important measures. One is opposition to military build-ups. Another is lobbying for the conversion of armaments expenditure to investment in genuine development efforts. Similarly, pressure on Western governments to adopt a non-interventionist policy in countries undergoing fundamental structural change is essential. But policy makers do not usually act against the interests of the groups that put them in power. To ask capitalists to refrain from expansionism is to ask them to cease being capitalists. This is not to suggest that tactical decisions are predetermined. Surely the anti-war movement influenced the U.S. decision to withdraw from Vietnam. Nonetheless, it is not enough to stop Western states from interfering in Africa.

Basic change must come about within African countries themselves. In this process, Western support for realigning the domestic divisions of labor in Africa should be linked more closely to the internal situations within the advanced capitalist countries. Just as production is increasingly international, struggles in various parts of the global political economy must be interwoven. As the struggles intensify, moralizing about the evils of exploitation should not replace thoroughgoing analysis of the crisis.

Equally important to contemplate is the question of what has not been done adequately at all. Although state actions must be continually challenged, it is wrong to allow those who hold the reins of power to set the agenda. Unfortunately, many opponents of their government’s policies in Africa have largely been reactive, their strategies crisis-oriented. Typically, critics have formed single-issue movements: anti-apartheid, nuclear freeze, pro-Sandinistas, and so on. What is required is an interlinking of movements that mobilize constituencies across such diverse issues as militarism, feminism, and intervention in different parts of the world. It is essential to bring home to workers, community groups, and intellectuals precisely how individuals are personally involved in Third World struggles.

Surely there is a long road to travel before liberation is achieved. Setting aside the exaggerated optimism of the early post-colonial period and the ensuing pessimism about Africa’s prospects for development, it is a truism to say that massive struggles in earlier historical epochs, such as the passage from feudalism to capitalism, a transition which engulfed the entire globe, have spawned fundamental transformations. It is out of the crucible of crises and from hard-fought struggles that new social forces emerge and invent creative solutions to deeply embedded problems. Improvements do not come steadily; there are traps and confusions, followed by sudden breakthroughs. And even then it can be hard to measure progress.

If liberation requires a monumental feat, one can say that the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars has contributed modestly to the struggle. Political work and research by Africanist scholars over the last decade have helped to reformulate questions and provide vital information for educators. Now we must continue to expand our membership, form coalitions with like-minded groups, consider the merits of a broader publications program, seek new ways to alter U.S. foreign policy, and open additional channels for assisting the liberation movements. The task is no less than devising novel ways to abolish the grim conditions in which the majority of humankind has been condemned to live and charting strategies for the course ahead.

Originally published in ACAS 10 years On – Now, ACAS Bulletin 23 (1988), pp. 35-40.

Reprinted in ACAS Bulletin 81

I remember vividly a conversation with the late FRELIMO President Samora Machel in my garden in Dar es Salaam in 1972. I had done a variety of odd-jobs for the Mozambican liberation movement during the seven years of my teaching tenure in Tanzania and a few weeks earlier Machel had arranged for me to accompany FRELIMO guerrillas on a trip into the liberated areas of Tete province. Now he had com to bid me and my family goodbye as we packed to leave Tanzania.

“You have now seen something of our struggle”, he said. “But for most Canadians their knowledge of it is at point zero. You must try to do something about that when you return home.” It was not an order exactly, yet I could literally feel his will galvanizing me into action, communicating to me personally the kind of drive and purpose I have seen him communicate to Mozambicans, singly and in large gatherings, both before and since that day. It was no accident that on my return to Canada I would soon find myself working with others to launch the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Portugal’s African Colonies, TCLPAC (which, as the since renamed Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa, TCLSAC, celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 1987). No accident, either, that this kind of experience was to have a profound impact on my scientific work.

Like so many other “activist scholars concerned with Africa”, I thus discovered my vocation for political work around African issues — and, in my case, specifically around Southern African issues — in Africa itself. And certainly, “in the last decade (or so)”, those of us who have followed this path have been privileged to accompany a remarkable upsurge of popular assertion in the region — the overthrow of the Portuguese colonial presence, the downfall of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, the revitalization of the resistance movement in South Africa. Self-evidently, the struggle for liberation which we now seek both to interpret and to facilitate is at a very different level than it was in the dark days of the 1960s when South Africa’s first Emergency crushed hopes for significant changes for a decade and reduced the anti-apartheid constituency in western countries to a debilitating posture of mere moralizing about a seemingly static situation.

Of course, the situation in Southern Africa remains framed by the larger development crisis in Africa as a whole: no-one can now pretend, if ever they did, to have any very ready answers to the problems which confront the continent. More immediately, the regional conjuncture is marked by the continuing vitality of the apartheid state itself. This is a state contested in new ways — in ways that the more recent and on-going Emergency can only forestall although not, this time, crush — but it is strong nonetheless. Strong enough, unfortunately, to smash by means of its destabilization strategy the high hopes that accompanied Samora Machel and his colleagues into power in 1975. And strong enough, at least in the short-run, to stalemate the euphoria and the momentum which characterized the South African resistance movement’s advances of the period 1984 to 1986. No-one can doubt that there is unfinished business in Southern Africa and if, as is obvious, the main protagonists of renewed advance must be Southern Africans themselves, there is also more than enough unfinished business for “activist scholars” to be getting on with.

But what is our “business”? We should not underestimate the extent to which it is, in fact, scholarship, scholarship shaped by our activism and our commitment to the struggle in Southern Africa, but scholarship nonetheless. Not that we need apologize for twinning the terms “activism” and “scholarship”. Quite the contrary, since scholarly preoccupations — the questions asked — do not spring spontaneously from the data but are themselves shaped by an on-going process of “ideological class struggle”. As it happens, there are few fields of scholarly endeavour where radical intellectual work has had such a profound impact as in African Studies. This is precisely because an impressive level of engagement has encouraged as many “Africanists” as it has to ask the hard and searching questions that a more conservative and passive scholarship would obscure.

Engagement can only take us so far, of course. Once those “hard and searching questions” have been posed, adequate answers to them can only be found by doing full justice to the highest scholarly-cum-scientific canons — in elaborating arguments, pursuing data and weighing evidence. Needless to say, there will always be the danger of shaping our analyses to fit our preconceptions. We must work to keep each other honest as we continue to walk the tightrope of understanding regarding Southern Africa: scrutinizing carefully the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the various post-colonial and socialist projects in the region, for example, while never losing sight of the broader context of South African destabilization, the crippling impact of which so profoundly blights all development efforts there; evaluating the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the resistance movement in South Africa itself while never losing sight of the shifting mix of repression and pseudo-reform which defines the powerful drag of apartheid state and racial capital upon the drive for liberation.

Let me emphasize that something more than mere intellectual honesty for its own sake is at stake here. Analytical rigor is actually of direct and profound importance to the anti-apartheid movement itself. For an anti-apartheid movement built on mere enthusiasm and apolitical moralizing cannot easily survive the cruel vicissitudes inevitable in so difficult a struggle as the one for Southern Africa; those who stay the course, experience attests, are those who are least naive. Of course, the most salient voice itemizing those vicissitudes must be that of Southern Africans themselves. Yet the analyses we have produced as “scholar-activists” have, in western countries, percolated usefully through the profession, through the anti-apartheid movement broadly-defined and even into the public arena, where – rather against the odds and without overstating the case –we can at least presume to assert (with Brecht) that “our rulers would have slept more comfortably without us”!

Engagement and scholarship, then. But a warning: militant sentiments manifested exclusively in the privacy of one’s own study are unlikely to sustain themselves or to retain their relevance. At the very least we must be better publicists, forcing the pace of the percolation process just referred to by self-consciously developing, each and every one of us, additional kinds of communications skills crafted to reach a wider range of potential audiences. Even more importantly, we must sustain our involvement, alongside others approaching the Southern Africa issue from different angles and different life experiences, within the anti-apartheid movement itself.

This is essential, as I have suggested, because activism — including such apparent “shit-work” as licking stamps and pounding the pavements! — is not merely good for the scholar’s soul but also for his or her brain. Self-evidently such activity is equally important for its more immediate and tangible impact on the struggle itself. Certainly, those of us who have been involved in the sanctions campaign — on-campus or off — have been active on a key front for both weakening the South African regime over time and for expanding the anti-apartheid constituency. At least as crucial, and rather less developed as an action front, is the building of direct support for the beleaguered progressive governments of Southern Africa (Angola and Mozambique, in particular) and for the progressive movements for change in South Africa and Namibia (the ANC-UDF-COSATU alliance and SWAPO, in particular).

Such support work for liberation is in many ways even more difficult to carry out than sanctions-related activity. Several factors produce a much less responsive and united audience for it in North America. There is, in the first instance, the prevailing 1980s’ atmosphere of Reagan/Thatcher-style global red-baiting and, linked to it, the promiscuous use in public discussion of the emotive charge of “terrorism”. There is the sincere but too often misleading, selective and overly comfortable predilection for “non-violence”. And there are the tensions and confusions still generated within the anti-apartheid movement itself by the manipulation of oversimplified “black consciousness” formulations. Yet in light of the intransigence of the South African regime and the consequent inevitability of escalating conflict, there will be an even greater necessity in future to support the on-going popular struggle — including armed struggle — in South Africa. We must, as activists and as scholars, move to comprehend and seek to legitimate that struggle even more successfully than we have done to date.

I began this brief note by invoking the name of Samora Machel, so important in shaping my own commitment and that of many others touched by the Mozambican experience. Let me close by invoking another name, that of Ruth First, friend and former colleague at the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique, and a formidable exemplar of the “activist-scholar” role if ever there was one. Her substantial contributions to both the hands-on struggle in South Africa and to progressive Africanist scholarship are well known. But note something else. She was assassinated in 1982 when, as Director of Research at the university’s Center of African Studies, she was using her formidable skills to design research and training programs extremely helpful to the Mozambican development effort. Moreover, only days before her death she had helped host a meeting of scholars drawn from all of the Frontline States of Southern Africa, a meeting designed to coordinate and focus research efforts the better to service the region-wide struggle against South African hegemony. There seems little doubt that her success in thus putting scholarship at the service of the Southern African revolution was the chief reason why the South Africans felt compelled to kill her.

Of course, few of us are as close to the front-line, either physically or spiritually, as was Ruth First –n or are we ever likely to be quite so dramatically at risk. Yet the urgency of the present situation in Southern Africa surely dictates that he attempt to be as committed as she was — and even that we be prepared to take a few risks. In short, her spirit is something that, as aspirant “scholar-activists”, we must seek to emulate.

Originally published in ACAS 10 years On – Now, ACAS Bulletin 23 (1988), pp. 35-40.

Reprinted in ACAS Bulletin 81

It seems that, at least since 1945, every decade has been “fast moving” in Africa. The period since 1975 has not been less so. We must first appreciate it by reference to the previous decade. 1965-66 was in fact a bad year for Africa: the rash of coups which toppled Nkrumah, Modibo Keita, Ben Bella (the stalwarts of the old “Casablanca” powers), the closing-out (at least momentarily) of Congolese social revolution with the coup by Mobutu, the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of the Rhodesian white settlers.

The bloom was off. The rosy optimism of 1960–”Africa’s Year of Independence”–was over. The euphoria of the founding of the OAU in 1963 was now a memory. And Africa settled into the realities of enormous economic difficulties, political repression (including massively in South Africa after the Rivonia trial), and neo-colonialism seemingly triumphant. The main “action” was in the Portuguese colonies, where the movements had launched their wars for national liberation.

The Portuguese African struggles paid off, as we know. The Portuguese collapsed internally, and suddenly in 1975, all the former Portuguese colonies were independent states. We know too the further developments: independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, the increased struggle of SWAPO, and the reemergence of a popular political struggle in South Africa coupled with an intensified pressure from ANC: the Durban strike, the founding of COSATU, Soweto, the mergence of the UDF, the Dakar meting, etc. We know also the other side of this coin: “destabilization” everywhere, beginning with the march on Luanda in 1975.

Yet we of course should not miss the difference between 1965-75 and 1975-87. Today South Africa tries to destabilize and forbids TV coverage of African funeral marches. Then they ruled with an iron hand. Today the U.S. Congress votes sanctions. Today they are compelled to release Govan Mbeki. Today they “merely” destabilize. Today they are clearly on the defensive.

The transformation is the result of African political organization, particularly in southern Africa. What role have outside solidarity organizations played in this? An important one. We should neither minimize it nor exaggerate it. The outside solidarity work has affected in important ways the constraints within which the U.S. and west European governments operate. This in turn affects the constraints within which the South African government operates. It is vital to tighten (and sometimes to alter) these constraints. And this has been done.

The campaign for disinvestment began in the late 1950s. It is today at last more or less successful. This is a very positive achievement. On the other hand, it points to the limitations of our possibilities. Disinvestment is more complicated in its consequences than we pretended, which is what our conservative opponents always predicted. As a result, everyone is “thinking” about it–the legal movements inside South Africa, the ANC, the Frontline States, the solidarity organizations. In a sense this shouldn’t have been so. We should have anticipated the present ambiguities and have had a strategy ready.

It is of course not too late. And we will solve this one, with a little effort. But are there other such “pitfalls” or dilemmas awaiting us? The struggle in Southern Africa will still be long. We should look ahead.

Originally published in ACAS 10 years On – Now, ACAS Bulletin 23 (1988), pp. 35-40.

Reprinted in ACAS Bulletin 81

I feel quite privileged and very honored to be asked to serve as the co-chair of ACAS. It is an organization which I have long admired and whose members have been particularly important in my intellectual, professional and personal development. Their commitment to the cause of peace and justice in southern Africa has been particularly heartening and encouraging to me and so many others over the years.

This is quite an exciting time for those of us who have struggled so hard, for so long, to bring an end to apartheid and U.S. support for that racist system. Last year, we saw a tremendous leap forward, both in the struggle inside South Africa and in this country. With the Free South Africa Movement building on years of anti-apartheid grassroots activity, it became the catalyst for igniting the spark of mass opposition to apartheid which has swept this country. Those loud protests succeeded in raising the visibility of the apartheid issue to force the international community to intensify its opposition to the Botha regime. Here in the U.S. we have dealt a death blow to the policy of constructive engagement by forcing Reagan to sign the Executive Order – no matter how weak – imposing sanctions on South Africa. Clearly, it is not enough, and we must go much, much further. Because of our success, our enemies have recognized our strength and our power and they are fighting back.

In fact, they are fighting back harder than ever.

However, the coming year offers us some of the best opportunities to keep the apartheid issue before the public despite attempts to put it on the back burner. Several important anniversaries will be observed this year: the 10th anniversary of the Soweto massacre, in which close to a thousand school children were murdered, the 20th anniversary of South Africa’s illegal control over Namibia and the 25th anniversary of the launching of the armed struggle by the African National Congress (ANC). We must use these anniversaries to further mobilize and educate the American people.

This also promises to be a very significant year for the struggle in southern Africa for other reasons as well. If 1985 was a pivotal time for South Africa, then 1986 will he even more of a watershed year. The formation of the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU) is an exciting development which will precipitate important events. Already the new federation has announced that it will call for the burning of pass-books in the middle of this year. Bishop Tutu also has announced that the churches will call for an economic boycott. What this means, of course, is that the struggle will intensify even further.

When these events happen, we must be prepared to take immediate action in support of our brothers and sisters in South Africa. This is where an organization like ACAS can make a valuable contribution. One of the major tactics the racist regime and their U.S. allies will attempt is to obfuscate the real issues in the southern Africa region in order to gain support for apartheid. The activist-scholar community can play a critical role in providing the information necessary to refute the South African propaganda machine. We must be in the vanguard of exposing the lies and misinformation that will be presented to the American public.

We must take the lead in focusing attention on how apartheid is affecting the entire southern Africa region. We must expose the continued exploitation and oppression in Namibia, the hunger in southern Africa and the activities of the “contras” in Angola and Mozambique. Most importantly, we must help shift the focus in this country back to apartheid terrorism as opposed to Soviet expansionism as the root cause for problems in southern Africa.

Jonas Savimbi’s visit to the U.S. leaves us with a task to be done. We must intensify our lobbying efforts to defeat congressional bills to fund UNITA and to prevent covert aid as well. Our campaign cry must be “funding for UNITA is funding for South Africa.” We must lobby for the passage of the Namibia bill introduced by Pat Schroeder and we must go back to push for stronger sanctions against South Africa. A comprehensive economic sanctions bill is the only viable option given the present level of the struggle inside South Africa.

We must seize this historic moment to make our contribution to the final phase of the struggle for justice in South Africa. The time is now. The task is at hand. The challenge is ours and I know that we will not fail. Onward to victory!

Dated February 5, 1986

About the Author

In 1986, Dr Jean Sindab of the Washington Office on Africa was Co-Chair of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars.

From ACAS Bulletin 81