Africanists generally agree that the United States, in the formulation and execution of its foreign policy, has historically relegated Africa to a low priority. To the extent that there has been an Africa policy at all, it has been described by scholars with such terms as a “policy of indifference,” a “non-policy,” a “policy of benign neglect.”

The election of John F. Kennedy as President of the United States coincided with the “Age of Nationalism” in Africa, an era which saw the majority of Black Africa freed from the yoke of colonialism. Kennedy made a conscious attempt to demonstrate that the United States was sympathetic to the ideals cherished most by African nationalists: national independence and self-determination; territorial integrity and security; and economic development. It was as a result of his administration’s initiative that various economic development programs (i.e., the Peace Corps, USAID) took root in Africa. However, under President Johnson, U.S.

Public Law 96-212, the Refugee Act of 1980, which President Carter signed into law on March 17, 1980 and which went into effect on April 1, 1980, stands as irrefutable evidence of our humanitarian and democratic ideals and concerns as a nation. Adopted after years of study and in the light of our increasing experience in confronting the refugee problem as a permanent phenomenon of global dimensions, the new law represents a watershed in our immigration history. This is the first comprehensive amendment of our general immigration laws designed to face up to the realities by stating a clear-cut national policy and providing a flexible mechanism to meet the rapidly shifting developments of a troubled world.

There are many arguments advanced in support of “constructive engagement,” but the following claims are probably the most important. Apartheid is morally unacceptable. It creates difficulties in the West. It is in the interest of the West that it should come to an end with Western help. That interest coincides with that of most South Africans, except perhaps, an increasingly unrepresentative minority. Total disengagement, disinvestment, and trade boycotts are deemed impractical and unlikely, in any event, to succeed in supplanting the racist regime.

The collapse of any social order is inevitably presaged by the failure of its normalizing institutions to command their accustomed ideological authority. All long-held values, assumptions, and moral codes and norms of behavior are suddenly called into question. Uncertainty replaces confidence. Chaos replaces order. The glaring gap between rhetoric and reality becomes too obvious to elicit respect.

The collapse of Portuguese colonization in 1975 and the ensuing independence of Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe and the intensification of the national and class struggles in Namibia and South Africa has produced a crisis of unprecedented proportions for the South African regime and its imperialist backers. Historical alliances and loyalties are being undermined.

The basic facts are well known: half the world’s refugees are in African, trying to eke out an existence in some of the world’s poorest countries. Since the numbers –five million is the usual total given for all Africa–change constantly, one cannot be precise about how many there are. African countries have opened their doors and, inevitably, their economies to the refugees; the international community is giving help, chiefly through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. There are obvious reasons for countries of asylum to inflate the figures. Moreover, since more homeless people may arrive tomorrow–or may already have come without making their presence known–the’most honest of officials have incentive to err on the generous side.

No one is happy with the Reagan Administration’s southern Africa foreign policy strategy known as constructive engagement. Liberals object to the tilt towards South Africa, to the linkage of Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola to the Namibian negotiations; to the resulting moribund state of those negotiations; and to the deemphasis of human rights and development issues in favor of increased emphasis on military and security issues. Conservatives object to economic assistance packages for African socialist and self-styled states; to the declining U.S. support of Jonas Savimbi’s ostensibly pro-Western UNITA forces in Angola; to Administration efforts to improve relations between the United States and the Marxist states of Angola and Mozambique; and to the Administration’s apparent willingness to accept a SWAPO (i.e., communist guerrilla) outcome in Namibia.

The fact that more than half of the world’s refugees are presently found in Africa is a reality that has gone unrecognized or been ignored by the Reagan Administration policies toward refugees. This is partially a reflection of the lack of understanding of the American public about the extent and magnitude of the refugee crisis in Africa. The current total of 6.3 million African refugees is likely to increase substantially in the near future. In absolute terms, the increase in the number of African refugees for the last ten years is over 5 million, an increase of more than 500%. The rate of increase between 1979-81 is particularly significant. Within two years the refugee population swelled by 50%, giving Africa the tragic responsibility of being a host continent for more than half of the world’s refugees (See Table 1).

New York, N.Y., February 12, 1982. The Emergency Committee for African Refugees, in a joint press conference with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), announced a campaign to block the deportation of nearly 5,000 Ethiopian refugees. These Ethiopians have had their Voluntary Departure Status cancelled by the United States Department of State.

The size and intensity of this audience bespeaks the great concern that exists about the current drift of U.S. policy towards Africa, especially southern Africa. Our government has come to have close relations with South Africa, along with the business community. Why the shift in policy direction if that is indeed what has happened and if so, what is it based on? Last night, Professor Magubane said it seems to be based on the profit motive. Perhaps we are more generally accustomed to think that it must be based upon racism. Crocker has written at one point in Foreign Affairs that perhaps it is based upon temerity, that is to say, we must dare in southern Africa.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world. Except for a brief five year period of Italian occupation (1936-41), Ethiopia, in the span of its thousands of years of existence, was never conquered and administered by a foreign power. Therefore, the tradition of permanent emigration or seeking asylum in foreign countries is an alien concept to the Ethiopian people.

Ancient and medieval Ethiopia is depicted as having existed in isolation from contemporaneous states and empires. This attribution of isolationism, compactly expressed by Edward Gibbon’s oft quoted statement that “the Ethiopians slept nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten,” is not at all borne by historical facts.

During the past decade, American foreign policy interests in Southern Africa have steadily increased. In 1974, the collapse of the Portuguese government led to independence for Mozambique and Angola. More recently the Zimbabwean and Namibian liberation struggles have occupied center stage. International attention to South African events has also increased while Western concerns about Soviet influence in the region have intensified. Policy-makers in the United States have not remained immune to these changes. In fact, while American interests in the region have not really changed, they have increased because of the foregoing events and the way they are perceived by American policy makers.

In April 1980, all the majority-ruled states of Southern Africa gathered in Lusaka, Zambia, and formed the Southern African Development Coordination Conference.

The debate over who is a “legitimate refugee” involves more than just a quarrel over definitions. Haitians and African refugees, largely Ethiopians, have come to our shores in much the same manner as previous groups. The reaction to the arrival of these groups, however, must be seen in the context of legal and political changes in American society.

The “first asylum” phenomenon of persons fleeing to the United States as their first place of refuge from persecution has become the primary focus of any policy decisions affecting our refugee and immigration laws. Further, the “first asylum” issue has blurred the distinctions between refugees and immigrants.

Despite continued American insistence that a negotiating impasse had not been reached, by the final months of 1982 it seemed clear that internationally-recognized independence for Namibia would not soon be achieved. While Washington claimed that negotiations between South Africa, Angola, and the Southwest African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) (with the U.S. as mediator) remain meaningful, there appears to have been a decisive move away from settlement. The latest round of negotiations, spearheaded by the United States as the leading element of the Western Contact Group (the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and Canada), has attempted to move South African-controlled Namibia to independence on the basis of Security Council Resolution 435 of September 1978.

May 1983 saw two diametrically opposed efforts to change some fundamental features of contemporary South Africa. On May 3, Prime Minister Botha’s new Constitutional Bill was introduced in the House of Assembly providing for the first time for the inclusion of Coloured and Indians in the previously all white national legislature. Minor as the role of these two minorities will be should the new structure be adopted, the provisions signaled two white objectives: to split the black front, such as it is, and to underline the permanent exclusion of the majority Africans from any share in making national decisions.

On May 20, what might be considered the response to that formal exclusion came with the use for the first time by the seventy-year-old African National Congress of a new and deadly tactic when it exploded a car bomb outside airforce headquarters in Pretoria, killing eighteen people.

Africa remains the continent with the greatest number of refugees. All over the continent, refugees arrive in countries facing their own development problems and difficulties; they are, nevertheless, received with generosity and hospitality, in line with deep-rooted traditions that have remained alive thoughout the turmoil of events.

I cannot but emphasize once more, at the outset of this gathering, my profound appreciation for this approach of African governments and peoples to the refugee problem. This attitude brings considerable relief to the plight of the refugees and is an example to the world; it is also an ever-present asset in our relationship with the governments and in our co-operation with the Organization of African Unity, the multiple aspects of which are being constantly developed and reinforced in the most positive humanitarian spirit.

– “One of the most pressing problems of the world today–the plight of over 5 million refugees in Africa”

– “Every other refugee in the world is an African”

– “The refugee tragedy in Africa is a human tragedy”

– “The largest refugee problem on the continent is in the Horn of Africa”

The quotations above succinctly describe the refugee situation in Africa, in general, and especially in the Horn of Africa. In recent years, the Horn of Africa has been experiencing a rapidly worsening refugee situation. In 1979, the Organization of African United indicated that Africa, apart from “becoming the continent with the largest number of least developed countries and harbouring the largest number of the most economically backward regions in the world–constituting the periphery of the periphery in the international economic system, Africa is ... becoming the continent with largest number of refugees who constitute more than 40 per cent of the world refugee population.” The situation has since worsened as the number of refugees has reached, perhaps passed, the 5 million mark.

South Africa’s white minority government faced a severe crisis in the 1970s as it attempted to support major industrial expansion and a dynamic economy while maintaining its separate development policies. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the South African economy had been described as ready to “take off” as manufacturing moved to the dominant position in the economy. At the same time, the economy suffered from labor shortages, suppressed wages, restricted product markets, and inflation, as a direct result of the government’s restrictive labor policies. In a speech to industrialists and academics, Harry Oppenheimer of the Anglo-American industrial group stated that these industrial and economic problems were a direct result of governmental policies which limited the use of African labor and therefore throttled back the entire economy.

There can be little doubt that the African refugee problem is a severe one that should command a good deal more attention than it has received over the past few years in the public’s eye. But if the African refugee crisis has received less than its deserved attention, the role of private voluntary organizations (PVOs) in responding to that crisis has received less. It is the purpose of this brief inquiry to assess the role of PVCs in the African refugee situation. Before doing so it is essential that the dimensions of Africa’s refugee problem be briefly outlined.

In their study of personal rule in black Africa, Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg maintain that the most important factors shaping contemporary African politics are the political skills, orientations, and leadership styles of African heads of state. They assert that African nations as yet lack well-developed political institutions and hold that in the absence of such institutions, the politics of personal rule are much more decisive in shaping the character and continuity of African regimes than any economic, social, or cultural factors. As a logical outcome of these contentions, Jackson and Rosberg assert that, far from being aberrations, succession crises are an integral feature of personalistic politics. Because of the decisive influence of the leader’s abilities and orientations, his death or removal may very well bring about fundamental changes in the regime over which he presided.