Charles Cobb Jr
22 July 2002
interview
Washington, DC — Few U.S. political leaders in the United States are as identified with Africa as Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, former Congressman from that city and U.S. representative to the United Nations during the Carter administration.
He has continued that involvement through a company he founded in 1996, Goodworks International, whose main objective said a company spokesperson "is to help U.S. businesses find new markets in Africa." Goodworks has corporate clients in Nigeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. It has a satellite office in Abuja, Nigeria and is planning to open others in Ivory Coast and South Africa. The company is also listed by the US department of justice as a lobbyist for the government of Nigeria.
Being a sometimes controversial voice for U.S. business investment in Africa may seem to be a long way from the Andrew Young who was an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who was deeply involved in the southern civil rights movement of the 1960s, but Andy Young - he is "Andy" to almost everyone - has found himself outside of the mainstream before. As a Congressman he pushed for sanctions against Rhodesia's white supremacist Ian Smith regime, and as UN ambassador met with representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in defiance of White House policy.
In a wide-ranging interview with allAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr. Young swims against the tide once again, expressing admiration for Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's land seizure and endorsement of South African president Thabo Mbeki's suspicions about anti-retroviral drugs. Excerpts:
You've been observing Africa for some time. Do you think the transition from Organization of African Unity to African Union is a significant one?
I think that as the Africans began to view the European Union and began to see that there seemed to be real power in sharing consistent values and economic philosophy in a region, they have been seeking to do the same. But it's different in that Africa was trying to shed itself of several decades of colonialism, military dictatorship and oppression. And I think they see the African Union as the beginning of a democratic, free enterprise or free market coalition that is more consistent with today's world and today's economics.
More consistent than what?
The hallmark of the OAU was a combination of African socialism and Cold War manipulation. It depended on foreign aid. It depended on outside influence and playing those forces against each other. I think the African Union is a move toward more independence and self-determination.
How much of the AU - and some people would say a lot - is Libyan President Muammar Al-Gaddafi's creation?
Well, I don't think this is Gaddafi's creation at all. It's really much more Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria's Obasanjo and Bouteflika of Algeria. I think Gaddafi has attempted to take over an influential role in Africa and has played a very....I don't know Gaddafi so I really shouldn't make judgements, but when I see his hand in Sierra Leone and Liberia it is not a constructive hand. Or Chad.
Now I think that a part of Gaddafi's problem is the result of the American isolationism and I was an advocate for engaging Gaddafi back in the 1970s because I don't think isolation works. It hasn't worked with Castro. It hasn't worked with Saddam Hussein and it hasn't worked with Gaddafi. What I see is Obasanjo and...well first Mandela - beginning to engage Gaddafi to try to transform his influence from a negative, destructive influence, which it was in Sierra Leone and Liberia and Chad, trying to give him a positive role.
And do you think they are being successful?
I think they are successfully containing him and neutralizing him.
It seems appropriate here to ask you about the war on terrorism as it relates to Africa. In waging it, do you think there is the risk of returning to something like the Cold War, where the faults of nations were overlooked in the interest of lining then up on the U.S. side?
I think that we have not focused on the war on terrorism in Africa. Gaddafi is responsible in part for terrorism in Africa. He has not blown up American ships but he has funded groups in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Chad. To some extent he has funded the war in the Sudan.
When we talk about the war on terrorism we're talking about the war on white people and American interests. We don't consider it terrorism when thousands of Africans are slaughtered. Nobody has suffered the effects of the Islamists like Algeria and you've never heard a word mentioned about it. Algeria also has an approach to terrorism that could be successful with a little help. It had a complete amnesty. It tried to include everybody. If you have a certain level of economic growth and are including disenfranchised people in the economic opportunities of the country then you have a chance against terrorism.
I think that what we get in terrorism, even though it's led by people who are not poor, is ultimately a revolt of the underclass with upper class leadership. What I don't understand is why they're scared of women, but the terrorist factions are scared of their own women - they terrorize their own women. There is something very sick about the terrorist approach to life and not just their approach to power and to white people, but their approach to their own women. The terrorism in Algeria was focused in large measure on women who refused to veil themselves.
And there is Nepad, also bound to the question of African union or unity. It is not clear to me what the relationship of Nepad to the African Union is going to be, especially since Nepad is opening up offices and building a staff structure in South Africa, whereas the AU will presumably be in Addis. And Nepad also seems to be more focused toward attracting Western investment on African development terms...
Not Western investment, it's investment. For instance, one of the things that made the privatization of South Africa's telecom company work was that SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications) of Texas became a partner of Malaysian Telecom and it was the presence of the Asian-American coalition that made it possible to work in some ways. They put together the $1.3bn for the telephone system. They made it work. They made their money out of it. They trained, and upgraded the equipment. They expanded the service. I don't think they have any staff there now but they're still profiting from their investment. And they're still sort of the managing partner of the operation. So you get Western and Eastern technology, Western and Eastern sensitivities contributing to a new African opportunity.
With Nepad?
Well, That's the way it worked with SBC. In Atlanta when I was mayor and in the decade or so since I left office, we were able to bring over US$70bn in private investment into Atlanta. Eleven hundred companies came here to invest money and create jobs. That was twice as much money as went into the African continent during the 1980; it was even equivalent to what went into Latin America apart from Mexico during the eighties.
All we did was provide an efficient, honest regulatory framework for investment. We said we will give you honest and efficient service. You don't have to pay anybody under the table and you can put your money in and take it out anytime you want to. We insisted on high environmental standards. We insisted on affirmative action in the sense that everybody who came in had to use minority or Black subcontractors and employ minorities fully. We worked at integrating them into our economy and it has created the largest...I don't know where all of this money is coming from in the Black community but all of these houses that are being built, all of these Black-owned businesses that are emerging, all of them, it seems to me, came out of the experience of Blacks being involved in eleven hundred international companies that moved in here in the 1980s along with the four hundred and something of the "fortune 500" companies that were here.
Once these Black people got in and learned how things worked they rose to the top of those companies where they could. Where they couldn't, they branched off and formed their own companies. And we've had a thriving economy as a result of it.
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