>PART III
>THE IDEA OF AN AFRICAN RENAISSANCE: MYTH OR REALITY

>Why Africa?
>Let me now shift gears and turn to the question some of the skeptics are
>probably asking, why should Americans be concerned about Africa. The
>first answer is economic. In the oval office last week, President
>Clinton reminded me of the economic potential of Africa by pointing out
>that "As these economies grow, America's prosperity and our security
>will benefit. The United States supplies just 7 percent of Africa's
>imports today, but already that supports 100,000 American jobs." Flanked
>by Vice President Gore and South Africa's Deputy President Thabo Mbeki,
>we talked about the new Africa fully cognizant of the fact that trade
>between the United States and Africa, now in excess of 18 billion
>dollars, is growing at a faster rate than trade in any other region;
>that more than 20 percent of U.S. import of crude oil is from Africa;
>and that much of the minerals of strategic interest to the United States
>are to be found in Africa. With a population of more than 600 million
>and the standard of living rising annually, it is no wonder that Ron
>Brown warned us two years ago against allowing the emerging markets of
>Africa to fall, without contest, into the hands of the Europeans and
>others who were among the first to recognize the economic potential of
>the new Africa.
>
>A second reason for a new partnership with Africa is political. We share
>similar national interests and we face similar international threats. I
>have seen first hand the threat to Southern Africa of drug-trafficking,
>international crime, terrorism and the spread of disease. As the world
>is discovering Africa, so are the purveyors of all sorts of social
>pathologies that threaten to weaken or destroy the gains now being made.
>A stronger, stable and prosperous Africa will be better able to address
>these new threats as well as work in partnership with others to protect
>and improve the quality of life globally. Democrats and Republicans,
>conservatives and liberals are all coming to recognize that in deepening
>our relationship with Africa, we are establishing a partnership of
>mutual benefit.
>
>The third reason for a new partnership with Africa is humanitarian.
>There is much talk of the need for an American policy that moves from
>aid to trade. But for many of the poorer countries that are still
>struggling with the legacies of what Kofi Annan described as the second
>wave, there will be a continuing need to empower the poor and the
>marginalized to be active participants in their own development. This
>form of participatory development or assisted self-reliance must, for
>the moment, remain as much a part of our strategy as trade. It not only
>promotes development and democracy, but it creates future trading
>partners as well
>
>A fourth reason for caring about Africa, for establishing a closer
>relationship with Africa, is moral. Many of the new leaders are
>demonstrating a commitment to the public values that we have long
>affirmed, but not always practiced. Many of the new democracies,
>particularly in Southern Africa, are rainbow nations with the need for a
>new kind of pluralism. Many of those who are most strongly Africanists
>are also the ones who most strongly embrace the continent in all its
>variety. If they succeed, they will be able to demonstrate to a badly
>fractured world that diversity need not divide; that pluralism rightly
>understood and rightly practiced is a benefit and not a burden.
>
>At a time in which we in the United States are engaged in our own
>conversation about race, there is much to learn from the new Africa
>about the politics and place of race in an interdependent world. In
>South Africa, in particular, there is the beginning of a new kind of
>conversation that emphasizes the need to come to grips with the past
>before there can be any real progress in shaping a new and different
>future.
>
>To the economic, political, moral and humanitarian arguments for
>increased engagement with Africa, I must add one other that is unique to
>the history, tradition and social condition of much of this audience. It
>is probably best described as existential. Whether you belong to the
>ranks of those African Americans who feel a special kinship with Africa,
>as I do, or those who dismiss the Afro-connection as romantic nonsense
>as some others do, there is no denying that 12 percent of the American
>population claim Africa as their ancestral home. It is also the home for
>hundreds of millions of black men and women who know first hand why
>W.E.B. Dubois described the problem of the twentieth century as the
>problem of the color line. Many of them suffered with us as we endured
>the pain of billy clubs, water hoses and the other brutalities of
>Mississippi and Alabama just as we suffered with them when their
>children were killed in Soweto and their brothers and sisters shot down
>in Sharpesville. It is not, as some charge, that African Americans are
>romanticizing Africa to buttress their identity. It is simply that for
>many there is a historical tie to a place and its people that goes
>beyond color and culture to provide an enduring sense of connection and
>community.
>
>Like me, many of you grew up committed to two great movements, a civil
>rights movement in the United States and a liberation movement in
>Southern Africa. Our heroes were not only Frederick Douglas and Martin
>Luther King, but Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela as
>well. We shared the pride of the first wave of African independence with
>Kwami Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and Julius Nyere. We felt the frustration
>of the second wave with military coups, failed states and dysfunctional
>leaders, and we now share the enthusiasm of the third wave with Africa's
>new leaders who point to clear signs of an African renaissance. The gut
>feeling may be partly existential, but the hard facts are economic and
>political.
>
>Nothing Can Stop Africa Now
>The message I bring, then, should now be clear. I appeal to the members
>and friends of Alpha Phi Alpha to join the emerging campaign to reverse
>the image of Africa as a continent in crisis, a place of poverty, a
>region of failed governments and missed opportunity. A new day is
>dawning. The window of opportunity for an African renaissance is wide
>open. Future generations of African Americans will not look kindly upon
>us if we permit that window to close without an all out effort to help
>establish what is essentially a partnership of mutual benefit.
>
>Just before I left South Africa for the United States, almost 1,000
>African Americans stopped over in Pretoria on their way to Zimbabwe for
>the African - African American Summit. When asked why so many African
>Americans were converging on Southern Africa from so many directions,
>the Reverend Leon Sullivan said "The time has come for African Americans
>to help Africa with educational skills, our money and our political
>power We have an obligation and a responsibility to do so ... As black
>people we are one family, and in this world today, we rise together or
>we fall together."
>
>Let me, thus, conclude with a very direct answer to the question I posed
>at the beginning by quoting President Mandela's likely successor in
>South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. Speaking to the South African Constitutional
>Assembly, he said "Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop
>Africa now. Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace. However
>it might sound to skeptics, Africa will prosper. Whoever we may be,
>whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our
>past, however much we may have been caught by the fashion of cynicism
>and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us say today
>nothing can stop Africa now."
>
>I appeal, therefore, to the men, women and friends of Alpha Phi Alpha to
>tell everyone you see and everyone you meet that nothing can stop Africa
>now. Sing it in the streets and shout it from the roof tops, the idea of
>an African renaissance is real. Nothing can stop Africa now.