Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 15, 1993 TAG: 9302140006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ROBINSON CARRIES ON FIGHT AGAINST APARTHEID
Eight years ago you would have found Randall Robinson leading a march outside the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. In the crowd of perhaps 50, you'd also have found the late Arthur Ashe.This past week, as the world mourned the tennis champion-cum-activist, perhaps Robinson, executive director of the lobbying organization TransAfrica, mourned a little more deeply.
Robinson was the national coordinator of the Free South Africa Movement that took hold of the nation in 1984. For many years he and Ashe raised the American consciousness against South African apartheid.
They grew up in the segregated streets of Richmond to join the civil rights movement. They raised their voices on black issues around the world and continued to march and protest together as recently as September.
Today, as his friend's accomplishments and death are set in history, Robinson moves forward to continue raising awareness of Africa and black issues.
Robinson is scheduled to speak Tuesday at a one-day conference on the future of South Africa, sponsored by Virginia Tech and the Virginia Tech South African Studies Association beginning at 10 a.m. in the Haymarket Theatre of the Squires Student Center.
"It's important not to celebrate prematurely," Robinson said last year of the vote by South African whites to dismantle apartheid. But he admitted it was "a watershed event in South African history.
"The citizens of that country were faced with a clear choice: reform that will hopefully lead to a democratic South Africa, or chaos which would likely lead to a civil war. But no one is at the finish line yet."
Robinson, 51, has fought apartheid for 20 years.
In 1977, he formed TransAfrica to present and promote black American views on foreign policy. It is the country's only black American think tank devoted exclusively to African and Caribbean affairs.
Most recently Robinson has spoken out on Somalia and Haiti. Last December he, with Somalia-born fashion model Iman, pushed for a Somali peace conference that would begin re-establishing effective leadership for the country.
In September, like many years earlier, Robinson and Ashe marched outside the White House against the Bush administration's policy of repatriating Haitian refugees.
According to the Washington Post, Robinson said: "We have sealed these people into the death chambers of their own island."
Robinson reportedly said the White House's Haiti policy was "clearly and blatantly racist," and pointed out the Bush and Reagan administration policies of admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
TransAfrica has "been working on a range of issues for years, but sadly the American media pay little attention to Africa," Robinson told the Los Angeles Times last month. "Were it not for the American intervention, the coverage of Somalia would be as poor as it is on other issues like Zaire, Liberia, Haiti and Kenya."
Robinson said in September that the lives of whites is more highly prized and valued than the lives of blacks. More attention is paid to parts of Africa with more whites than to the rest of the continent.
There are more than 20 African countries in some stage of democratization, he said. There was democratization going on at the same time in Africa as in Eastern Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall made countless headlines and newscasts, but little or no attention was paid to what was going on in Africa.
The conference at Tech will bring together leaders of South Africa's competing political factions to debate the prospects for democracy in their strife-torn land.
In addition to Robinson, the program features seven panelists representing a wide spectrum of political views on South Africa.
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