At the important forum for debate of the current state of African-American relations provided by the African-American Institute meetings in Harare, Zimbabwe, in January 1983, two apparently contradictory themes emerged in the public and private assessments of American-African policy by the African delegates. On the one hand, they observed—to their disappointment and dismay—that American policy appeared to remain essentially unchanged over the last quarter-century. On the other, and in the next breath, they angrily denounced the theory of “constructive engagement” in southern Africa, and in particular its corollary of “linkage” of Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola to South African acquiescence in a Namibia settlement.
Is it possible that Chester Crocker is simply Richard Moose by another name? Senator Jesse Helms evidently thinks so, but should we? Or, to put the matter more graphically, is it plausible that, despite the apparent rhetorical contrasts, United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick holds essentially the same views concerning Africa as did her predecessors Andrew Young and Donald McHenry? Perhaps this is a timely moment to explore this seeming paradox. Within the foreign policy machinery of the United States government, Africa was accorded bureaucratic recognition in 1958, a quarter-century ago, through the creation of the Bureau of African Affairs. This organizational innovation symbolized the birth of an African policy, even though episodic connections with sundry African states extend far back to the early days of the Republic: Liberia, Morocco, Zanzibar, Egypt, Ethiopia.
