RFK in South Africa: Another Era of U.S. Global Engagement

Today is a national holiday here in the U.S., celebrating the life and achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr.  There is nothing I could add to the many paeans to King (but I recommend that anyone needing a refresher look up his writings and speeches). But in thinking about the times King lived in and tumult of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s, I am reminded of a key moment in which those struggles were linked to another similar case, South Africa.

In June 1966, Robert Kennedy, then a senator representing New York, traveled to South Africa during some of the darkest days of the apartheid era.  While there, Kennedy delivered the Day of Affirmation speech at the University of Cape Town and clearly connected the struggles for civil rights in the U.S. and South Africa:

I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.

Robert F. Kennedy in South Africa – Photo Credit: Marion Kaplan

Later in the speech is a section that would eventually (two years later) be inscribed on Kennedy’s grave at Arlington Cemetery:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.

The speech is remarkable in many ways (it can be found in its entirety here). It was delivered to a mostly white audience, and to mostly students.  In the speech Kennedy appeals to them to champion real change and to draw on the dynamism of their youth and to make connections to other young reformers around the world.  It would take another 27 years for apartheid to end but Kennedy’s trip to South Africa is still remembered there as a notable event in the anti-apartheid movement.  It is less well remembered in the U.S.  But without the U.S. civil rights movement and the example of Martin Luther King, Jr, Kennedy’s speech as he gave it would not have been possible.

One of the great lessons of the speech for our era and for American foreign policy is that it does not seek to downplay the difficulties the U.S. was having in addressing civil rights.  Instead, Kennedy uses the U.S. struggles as a way to make a connection to South Africans. By doing so, Americans are positioned as fellow travelers on the long road to improve government and society, rather than seen as delivering haughty and pedantic lectures bent on teaching the rest of the world whatever it is we think we know best.  The key to global engagement is finding ways to truly engage, to connect with other people on issues that affect their lives, and ours.  That sort of engagement is a long process and involves knowing another country very well (as well as having a deep understanding of one’s own country) and building relationships in which working in partnership is the main component. It also requires a deep sense of humility and an understanding that the U.S. does not always have the answers.  The State Department and USAID work hard to train our diplomats and development professionals to work along these lines.  (Contractors are generally not as good at this, which is often no fault of the individual contractors but because of a system that values contractual “deliverables” and winning the next contract.)  It takes many years of experience and training to do the work of engaging the world on behalf of the U.S. (or any country); diplomacy and development are professions and not work to merely be farmed out to the lowest bidder.

I know a distinguished former U.S. diplomat and current international educator who carries a copy of Kennedy’s Cape Town speech in his briefcase wherever he goes as a reminder of why he does his work, and how it should be done.  Perhaps the speech should be required reading for anyone interested in how global engagement should work.