Blacks and Asians in Global Perspective
BY HAZEL M. MCFERSON
The history of interaction in the United States between Asians and African-Americans is far more nuanced than either the view that most interaction has been positive, or the more common, opposing view that what interaction has taken place has been uniformly negative. Certainly, in contemporary times there is a widespread impression, partly fed by the media, that relations between these two major groups in America are uniformly conflictual. But aside from the simple fact that Asians and Asian-Americans are not a monolithic group, there are substantial examples of cooperation as well as common interests that require joint or at least coordinated action. Overemphasizing either the positive or negative view of Black-Asian relations is equally incorrect from an analytical and policymaking viewpoint, but overemphasizing conflict is worse, for it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially as conflict makes for much better copy.
MIXED RECORD
This general theme of my forthcoming book, Blacks and Asians: Crossings, Conflict and Commonality, is echoed globally as well. Relations between Africans and Asians in Africa (whose presence dates to colonial policies encouraging importing indentured laborers, mainly from India), as well as contemporary exchanges between African and Asian countries, provides evidence of both conflict and commonality, of both hostility and post-colonial solidarity. The best illustration is provided by comparing the hostile nature of relations between Asians and Africans in Uganda to the mixed relations in neighboring Kenya, helped by Asians’ support for Jomo Kenyatta’s independence struggle, and the generally good climate in Tanzania, helped in part by Julius Nyerere’s enlightened attitude toward national unity.
An excellent account is provided in an article by Kenyan-born political scientist Michael Chege, reprinted as the last chapter of the abovementioned book. In that chapter, he traces the sometimes-troubled relations between Africans and Asian Indians in East Africa in the post-independence years. For many African politicians, Asian Indians have been a convenient and enduring scapegoat. In 1967, Paul Theroux was “vilified by press and politicians alike” for his essay “Hating the
Asians,” which examined Asian-bashing in the arsenal of Kenya’s African political discourse as well as in the press. More recently, during a March 1996 rally, then-Kenyan opposition leader Kenneth Matiba excoriated “these people for not mixing with us.” And, of course, who can forget the shameful mass expulsion of Asian Indians from Uganda in September 1972 by the late erstwhile dictator Idi Amin?
South Africa’s Nelson Mandela struck a very different tone. During the same period as Matiba’s remarks, he hosted a major symposium titled “The Asian Tigers and the African Lion.” Economic policymakers attended this event from the “Four Tigers”—the newly industrializing countries of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.
50 YEARS AGO: HOPES, OPPORTUNITIES
The 1996 symposium in South Africa evoked memories of the Bandung Conference in April 1955, when African and Asian leaders met in Indonesia met to examine mutual interests in the waning days of colonialism. Joining together in camaraderie and euphoria, African and Asian nationalists exemplified the Third World brotherhood of the day, advocating new expressions of commonalities forged in colonialism and fears of neocolonialism. As one looks back today, are there any legacies from that idealistic event, at which leaders from twenty-four Asian and African countries came together with a common vision?
The Bandung Conference was sponsored by Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, Indonesia, and Pakistan. It was attended by representatives from the Asian countries Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, Peoples Republic of China, Philippines, and Thailand;, and the African countries Egypt, Ethiopia, Gold Coast (now Ghana), Liberia, Libya, and Sudan. Representatives from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Yemen also attended. Among the nationalist icons in attendance were Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser, Indonesia’s Ahmed Sukarno, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, China’s Chou En-Lai, Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, and U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., of Harlem, New York. The conference discussed mutual help in achieving social and economic well-being for the large and impoverished populations; and addressed race, religion, colonialism, national sovereignty, and the promotion of world peace. The Bandung Conference certainly helped to forge modern identity politics of race, religion, and nationality.
COOPERATION IN RECENT YEARS
Regrettably, relations between Africa and Asia were sporadic in the intervening years. However, the promise of Bandung was rekindled 40 years later in the First Tokyo International Conference on Africa Development. Held in October 1993, the conference brought together Asian and African leaders to focus on political and economic reform, private-sector development, regional cooperation and integration, and international cooperation. The conference concluded that African development must become a central focus of the post Cold War international agenda. A recurrent theme was the need for Africa to learn from the experiences of Asian countries, particularly in promoting the role of the private sector as key to economic development.
Two regional workshops to put into operation the key principles of the Tokyo Declaration soon followed, in Zimbabwe in 1995 and Cote d’Ivoire in 1996. The Second Tokyo International Conference on Africa Development took place in October 1998. The resulting Tokyo Agenda of Action laid out a comprehensive program to promote African development, with Africa leading the process in an equal partnership with donor countries and agencies, based on sound social and economic policies, and the role of good governance in development.
These meetings, among other initiatives, resulted in a number of concrete developments:
- Basic human needs: support for maternal and child health measures, family planning, the empowerment of women, and combating HIV and AIDS.
- Agriculture: Asian-African collaboration led to the development, with donor support, of New Rice for Africa , a specially bred combination of Asian and African rice strains, combining the hardiness of local African rice species with the high-productivity of Asian rice.
- Human security, peace and good governance: in line with the Tokyo Agenda’s recommendations on peace and security, the African Union established an early warning mechanism for conflict prevention, management and resolution.
- Asia-Africa business collaboration: two Asia-Africa Business Forums have been held since 1998. The first, in Kuala Lumpur in October 1999, brought together a number of African and Asian business people; the second, in Durban, South Africa, in July 2001, attracted more than 140 participants representing over 120 African and 60 Asian companies.
- Conference on agriculture, development, and HIV vulnerability, in Bangkok in December 2002, to help Asian and African countries “benefit from the experience of each other in preventing and mitigating the adverse impact of AIDS on agricultural and rural development.”
- Establishment of the Hippalos Center, also known as the Asia-Africa Investment and Technology Promotion Center, whose purpose is to promote investment and technology transfer from Asian to African countries. The center also provides information on economic conditions, domestic legal systems, investment opportunities, and investment news.
- The establishment of a Japan-Africa exchange program, placing Asian volunteer experts in Africa, to support the priorities of the Tokyo Agenda for Action.
- Perhaps most significant is that trade between Africa and Asia is beginning to expand. As Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stated at the opening of the Asia-Africa Trade and Investment Conference in 2004, “African winds are blowing in Tokyo.” Although Africa accounts for only about 2 percent of global trade and foreign direct investment, African exports to Asia nearly tripled during the 1990s, from $6.7 billion in 1990 to $17.2 billion in 2000. The next challenge, according to Nigerian President Olusegun Obansanjo, is to increase Asian investment in Africa to help buttress economic growth and strengthen Africa’s economic competitiveness.
In addition to formal intercorporate linkages between Asian and African countries, interaction is also intensifying at personal levels. For example, an increasing number of individual African traders are flocking to wholesale markets in Thailand, China, and South Korea to buy apparel and consumer goods to resell at home. None of these Asian-African collaborative initiatives are dramatic, but they all carry real promise of fostering a substantial increase in constructive relationships between African and Asian countries. In turn, this is likely to rebound positively onto the interaction between Asians and Africans in Africa.
The history of troubled relations between Africans and Asians may be slowly giving way to a new recognition of common interests and reality of cooperation. To echo Michael Chege: “It is high time to harness the spirit of toleration to the project of increasing material opportunities. East Asia has shown how the economic part of this equation may be solved. Nelson Mandela and his government … set the pace in the resolution of the other side, the more delicate question of race, as have the courageous souls in East Africa who wish to extinguish the practice of hating…Asians—and indeed, other Africans—as a political sport.”
Hazel McFerson (hmcferso@gmu.edu) is associate professor of public and international affairs (http://pia.gmu.edu/) and an associate of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (http://icar.gmu.edu).
