Washington, DC — Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the retired South African cleric and Nobel Peace Prize winner, visited Washington Monday to appeal for a Marshall Plan-style aid for his country. In a day of meetings following a trip that took him from California to London, the Archbishop said the United States and the global community have a stake in what happens in South Africa.
"If South Africa explodes," Tutu told Bryant Gumbel on "The Early Show" on CBS, "if the racial experiment fails, it is going to have awful repercussions on racial relations in many places, including [the United States]." Afterwards he met with reporters at the South African ambassador's residence.
Drawing parallels not only with the Marshall Plan -- through which the Allied nations funnelled massive rebuilding aid to Europe after World War II -- but also with today's Middle East, the Archbishop said U.S. aid to Israel and Egypt after the original Camp David Accords was an example of enlightened self interest that should be replicated in southern Africa.
"Reconciliation in South Africa is at very great risk," Tutu said, unless the legacy of apartheid can be overcome. The former head of the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission said that a democratic South Africa must deliver clean water, homes, jobs and education and build an infrastructure that can tackle the devastating problem of H.I.V./AIDS.
"Our country is a scintillating success waiting to happen," he said. The United States and the wealthy community of nations have an interest in seeing that happen, both because South Africa can demonstrate the power of ethnic reconciliation and because a prosperous South Africa can be an engine for growth and development across the continent of Africa.
Among those Archbishop Tutu spoke to during his day in Washington were NAACP leader Julian Bond, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Congressional Black Caucus vice-chair, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), Congressmen Amo Houghton (R-NY) and Jim McDermott (D-WA), Deputy Secretary of Commerce Robert Mallett, President of the National Summit on Africa Leonard Robinson, Howard University President Dr Patrick J Swygert, and Constituency for Africa Director Melvin Foote.
