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Africa: US-Africa NGO Warns Terrorism Focus Will Divert Attention From Africa

Charles Cobb Jr.

1 October 2001

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interview

Washington, DC — The Constituency for Africa (CFA) which first began to take shape under the umbrella of the NGO, Africare, is now in its 11th year. The loose-knit coalition attempts to bring Americans of all backgrounds together around African issues. Of special concern to the organization is the fight against HIV/Aids in Africa. In another in allAfrica.com's occasional series of interviews with leaders of Africa-interested groups in the US, Charles Cobb Jr. spoke with the CFA Executive Director, Melvin P. Foote.

What is the Constituency For Africa and why is it needed?

In terms of the number of groups focused on Africa there has always been that charge that "another one isn't needed [and that it] just takes away limited resources". When I first came to Washington I heard that, because there was Africare and Transafrica, the African-American Institute and so forth.

But I personally don't think there are too many groups; I think there are not enough. I think the reality is that they need to work better together, though. There need to be closer ties and contacts and cooperation and sharing of information.

I think there needs to be different approaches [to Africa] because people are diverse. Some need to be aggressive like Salih Booker - I'm all for Salih taking the cutting edge; there's others that are much less obviously aggressive - they can work with the administration, they can talk to them. So you need all of it.

But CFA is ten and a half years old now - we were ten in December. We were founded in December, 1990, as a project of the relief and development agency, Africare. I had spent 13 years with Africare, first as a country director in Somalia and then, back in 1984, [Africare Director] C. Payne [Lucas] asked me to come back to head up his new effort to educate Americans about Africa and to build a constituency to support Africa. So, it was that work that got me started.

And back in 1990, I decided to connect all the groups I had been working with. Senator Paul Simon was constantly saying there was no constituency for Africa. He talked about when he went to speak to the Jewish community they always talked about Israel. When he went to talk to the Polish community they asked about Poland. But when he went to talk to the African-Americans they would only talk about domestic issues - jobs, affirmative action, that sort of thing. So he was always [saying] there is no constituency for Africa in the United States.

I knew there were a lot of people out there who really cared about Africa. There were Peace Corps volunteers. There were former ambassadors. There were Africans who were living in the United States. There were Africanists, pan-Africanists - a plethora of groups and organizations that were interested in Africa.

But I detected that they were not connected. And I detected that there was a shortage of information about what's going on in Africa. Because if you heard what people were saying, it was the most outlandish things; they lacked information.

African-Americans in the 1960s and 1970s would put on their dashiki and comb their hair out and talk about "Black Power". But if you asked them to name three African countries they couldn't do it. Or name one African head of state - couldn't do it.

I was heavily involved with the 1984-85 Ethiopian famine with Africare - and the stuff I heard then! Why help Africa? People are hungry right here? Why help a country that has a communist government? I asked black journalists in Atlanta around that time, 'how many countries are in Africa?' and not one person in the room knew. One guy said a thousand.

So I had detected a shortage of information and when I set up CFA, I set it up first to connect the dots and secondly to infuse information. I didn't really care what you did with the information. My whole thinking was that you should get more and better information. I saw with the AKA [sorority]; I started giving them information and they started doing the right thing, building wells and health clinics.

Is CFA a membership organization? Can people join?

Well, I set it up as a loose-knit coalition. And I call it loose-knit because back then, egos were a prime factor out here. You still had these big giants out here. You had C. Payne Lucas who was a great leader. You had Randall Robinson who was absolutely great. These guys were almost like pioneers, but they didn't work with each other very well. So we tried to figure out a mechanism to work together, but [at the same time, acknowledging] I don't own you, I don't own what you think.

We had contemplated a membership program but we have not moved in that direction yet. I think we're going to move in that direction. I think that after ten years we have actually built a base and people understand what we're trying to do and the trust factor has been established.

We tried to set up an organization that broke the rules. We organized among mid-level managers as opposed to the top guys. My coalition is people you will not know if you're looking for the heads of organizations. We became independent from Africare in 1994, the same month that Nelson Mandela got his independence. April 1994, the month that Nelson Mandela walked out of prison is the same month CFA became independent. That's going to be my link to history. I wasn't really ready for it. I didn't know what was to be expected but we had, by that time, built up good name recognition. We'd built up a good collection of people working with us.

Was there any particular reason you became independent?

Africare saw it as a conflict because CFA started getting a lot of publicity. I was featured in the February 1994 issue of Emerge magazine. That created certain pressures within the organization. I think the basic decision was that CFA would not grow if it stayed within the Africare structure.

It was a friendly parting of the ways. C. Payne Lucas is on my board of directors and was on the founding board of directors. He actually provided a great deal of stability. He is a very brilliant leader. Of all of the leaders, he is the most successful in terms of the Africa-focused groups. We get a lot from Africare, get a lot from C. Payne. We continue to be friends.

One of the issues that the constituency is very concerned with is AIDS in Africa. What's the scope of that problem?

Ron Dellums, our current chair, went to South Africa when he left Congress and really got introduced to the HIV/Aids problem and he became a zealot really, a real force to be reckoned with. He took the lead in pushing for global support to combat HIV/Aids in Africa.

So when he became chair, one of the discussions was that CFA would take a major role in focusing on HIV/Aids. I knew a lot about it back in 1984, 1985 in its early stages, because of the work we do. But Ron added greater dimension and really got us involved in information services.

Today, there is no problem in the world that is greater the HIV/Aids challenge. If you look at the tragedy of September 11 in this country, a perhaps even greater tragedy on that very same day is that we also lost 7,000 in Africa from HIV/AIDS.

Twenty-five million people in Africa are currently infected with the virus. You've got more than 13 million orphans in Africa and that number is going to swell to at least 40 million by 2010. Whole countries are being weakened. Infrastructures are being weakened. In many respects the continent is being totally fragmented and undermined because of the HIV/Aids pandemic. So it's devastating to Africa.

And Africa is only the tip of the iceberg. It's a global pandemic. Our main thing is that if we don't do something to draw the line and deal with it in Africa, we won't be able to stop it in India. We won't be able to stop it in China. We won't be able to stop it in the Caribbean. And we won't be able to stop it here in the United States. We say draw the line in the sand in Africa and learn how to come to grips with it, not only in terms of saving Africa, but saving the world.

That partially answers a question that came to mind as you were speaking. If you're building a constituency for Africa here in the United States, why wouldn't people respond by saying: "With the kind of Aids problem we have here in the U.S., especially among Black people, Hispanics and other minorities, why should we focus so much energy on the Aids problem in Africa, bad as it is?

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