Crying for Freedom
The National Endowment for Democracy in Africa, 1984 - 2024
NED and the Transition to Democracy in South Africa - Part 1
Overview
As political funding for democratic development is increasingly resisted by authoritarian regimes, it is important to reflect on the early experience of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), how it worked, and what it achieved. In NED’s formative years, South Africa was the primary focus of its grantmaking in Africa. At that time, the country was threatening to explode, as its repressive system of racial separation became the object of massive domestic protests and international sanctions. With an additional $2.7 million provided by the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) enacted by the US Congress in 1984, NED’s South Africa program was a successful demonstration of how international funding can support transitions to democracy. Assessing the contributions of the program from the vantage of more than 30 years, it is apparent that its legacy continues and that many lessons can be learned and applied to the global challenges to democracy that remain.
Project South Africa
In 1985, South Africa was on fire. A new protest movement, the United Democratic Front (UDF), had emerged, and in townships across the country meetings and marches and boycotts were being organized with thousands of participants demanding an end to apartheid, South Africa’s peculiar system of racial repression, which entailed pass laws, homelands, sham elections, mass incarceration, and an array of other forms of state violence and discrimination. The government declared a state of emergency, the National Union of Mineworkers began the country’s biggest strike ever, the ANC was exploding bombs, the country was at war in Namibia and Angola, and a scrappy independent press was fighting censorship. Gruesome vigilante justice was meted out by the notorious “necklace,” a burning tire around the victim; other movements, such as Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulu-based Inkatha movement and the Black Consciousness movement formerly led by the assassinated activist Steve Biko, vied for dominance. Meanwhile, back in the US, the Reagan administration pursued a policy of “constructive engagement,” the US Congress was passing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, and a new institution was just getting off the ground, the National Endowment for Democracy.
Established with a modest budget of $18 million in 1984, NED’s annual report that year shows clearly that most of the funding was channeled through the AFL-CIO’s Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI) to three regional institutes – The African American Labor Center (AALC), the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), and the Asian American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI). There was an emphasis on projects in Eastern Europe and Poland, including $400,000 to the Solidarity trade union, while a handful were also made to projects in Africa, mostly via the AALC. Much smaller amounts went to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), the National Republican Institute for International Affairs (NRIIA), and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) mainly for start-up projects around the world, including a few that were Africa-related. It was not until 1985 that NED would make its first grants for South Africa. According to the annual report:
“The Endowment has recently approved a planning grant for a program called “Project South Africa” which seeks to encourage peaceful and democratic change in that country. The project, designed by Bayard Rustin of the A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund, is designed to identify and assist South African organizations dedicated to a non-violent strategy to eliminate apartheid and to achieve democracy. Among the South African organizations already identified are trade unions, churches and church groups, human rights and voluntary agencies, educational associations and many others. Project South Africa hopes to facilitate direct contact between such groups and Americans dedicated to providing material and moral support to their efforts.
The Randolph Educational Fund has enlisted the support of prominent South Africans—black, white, colored and Indian—who will serve as advisors to evaluate and recommend projects to an American counterpart committee, which in turn will identify American organizations to work with and support the South African groups.” The grant was for $15,000. It reflected well the Endowment’s early and enduring approach “to support the participation of the two major American political parties, labor, business, and other United States private-sector groups in fostering cooperation with those abroad dedicated to the cultural values, institutions and organizations of democratic pluralism.”[1]
Two other grants for South Africa that year included FTUI, for assistance to Frontlash, a youth organization affiliated with the AFL-CIO, for a program designed to build cooperation between democratic student and youth groups in the U.S. and South Africa, for $86,028; as well as FTUI Southern Africa, for a regional program with a major focus on South Africa, to provide legal support to South African unions facing repression and legal harassment; to aid in the training of qualified black union lawyers and help to cover union legal expenses; and to conduct a series of fact-finding trips to assess the state of trade unions and trade union freedoms and to identify pro-democratic unionists in the region, for $130,000.
These early projects would provide a template for NED’s program as it expanded in South Africa, Africa, and beyond. Although they totaled just $231,028, they served as the basis for a much larger program that began coming together in 1986 as a result of the passage by the US Congress of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA), which in addition to sanctions, included $15 million to support victims of apartheid and which was administered by the Agency for International Development (AID). Carl Gershman, the new president of the Endowment, and Rustin traveled to South Africa that year to assess the development of a NED program and met a diverse range of contacts, US government officials, and potential grantees. Proposals started flowing in, but funds were limited, so NED sought additional means from AID. There was some political support for NED in the Congress, including from Congressman Merv Dymally and Senator Richard Lugar, but this was all new and it was uncertain how it was supposed to work. The bill had overcome an administration veto with bipartisan support, including from Mitch McConnell and Newt Gingrich. In fact, Congress had initially sought to channel all democracy assistance through NED due to its early presence on the ground, but to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, an appropriate relationship with AID had to be negotiated.2 Tim Bork, the AID administrator in South Africa, advised that NED focus on political programs, and leave the social development work to others, but was not enthusiastic about most of the groups identified by NED at the time. His advice was heeded. But in a seminal column published in Newsweek, Rustin complained that “Despite the fact that there are literally hundreds of groups, many of them multiracial, most of them committed to peaceful and progressive change, the U.S. government currently spends a paltry sum to help them—about $15 million this year.”[2]
With these modest beginnings, the CAAA would grow to become a critical vehicle for US policy towards South Africa, increasing year by year to reach $80 million in 1992. Rustin’s framing of it in the article proved influential: “The Senate decision to override President Reagan’s veto on sanctions against South Africa is an important step in clarifying a previously incoherent policy toward the Pretoria regime. Punitive measures will certainly contribute to strengthening our moral position and, it is hoped, enhance our badly tarnished image among South African blacks. But they alone are not enough. Economic pressure must be accompanied by a fundamental shift in our approach: U.S. policy can be effective only if our primary objective is to help foster the growth of democracy in South Africa, not merely to end apartheid.” Project South Africa thus sought to offer a kind of alternative middle way to some antiapartheid activists such as the American Committee on Africa and the Trans Africa Forum, which advocated economic and diplomatic isolation, but were initially suspicious of what might have been construed as support to social welfare projects that only reduced the pressure on the apartheid government.
Rustin’s vision for Project South Africa (PSA) was based on forging partnerships between South Africans and Americans, beginning with the creation of a remarkable group of 28 South African “Advisers” and 32 U.S. “Sponsors” listed on the Project’s brochure, showcasing both Rustin’s broad political networks and his remarkable convening power. Among the prominent South Africans were George Bizos, who had been Nelson Mandela’s lawyer; Allan Boesak, a founder of the United Democratic Front (UDF); Rev. Frank Chikane, general secretary of the Institute for Contextual Theology and later the South African Council of Churches (SACC); Nicholas “Fink” Haysom, research officer of the Center for Applied Legal Studies who would go on to play a central role in UN peace talks in Somalia and Sudan; Felicia Kentridge, attorney for the Legal Resources Center; Raymond Louw, editor of Southern Africa Report among many other books and publications; Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, secretary general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference; Bernadette and Leonard Mosala, Soweto Committee of Ten; Sally and Dr. Nthato Motlana of the Black Housewives League and Soweto Council of Ten, respectively; Beyers Naude, general secretary of the SACC; Marian Nell, director of the Human Awareness Programme; Ina Perlman, director of Operation Hunger; Dr. Rashid Salojee, leader of the Transvaal Indian Congress instrumental in creating the UDF; Helen Suzman, a liberal dissident Member of Parliament; Rev. Molefe Tsele, secretary of the National Education Crisis Committee; and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The American sponsors were no less illustrious, including Alvin Ailey, director of the dance theater; Dr. Gwendolen Carter, a professor of African Studies; Leo Cherne, chairman of the International Rescue Committee; Lionel Hampton, the musician; Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women; Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP; John Jacob, president of the National Urban League; Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO; Prof. Eleanor Holmes Norton; Professor Diane Ravitch; Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers; Leonard Sussman, executive director of Freedom House; Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of international relations of the American Jewish Committee; and Dr. William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago.
Project South Africa was among the last great political initiatives of Rustin before his untimely death due to complications from appendicitis in 1987.[3] Founded in 1985, PSA’s premise was described in a report he wrote with Charles Bloomstein and Bayard’s partner, Walter Naegle, entitled “South Africa: Is Peaceful Change Possible?” Answering in the affirmative at a time when the Carnegie Endowment warned in a seminal book, “Time Running Out,” that a conflagration was nigh, the Project sought to broaden the debate about South Africa, encourage engagement with South African activists within the country, not just the exiled ANC, and provide them tangible American support, both material and moral. With additional support from the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the New York Friends Group, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bradley Foundation and the Norman Foundation, as well as AID, the Project was challenged to establish its credibility. Both the South African advisors and the American sponsors helped in this regard, but ultimately it was the 60 or so non-governmental and civil society organizations that were identified as South African partners, most of whom received small contributions either directly from the Project or from American partners, that became the Project’s greatest strength.
While in the course of its few years of existence, the amount of resources Project South Africa was able to channel and the relationships it fostered were modest, a sample of some of the more than 30 South African groups that established partnerships with American groups gives a flavor of how the Project was supposed to work, as well as the rich civil society it was able to tap and for which South Africa would become famous. Thus, the Alexandra Art Centre partnered with the Inside Out Gallery; the Black Housewives League partnered with the American Association of University Women; the Centre for Social Development/Grahamstown Area Distress Relief partnered with the American Federation of Teachers; the Edendale Lay Ecumenical Centre partnered with the Garden City Friends and Las Lomas High School; the Education Information Centre partnered with Seattle University; the Human Awareness Programme partnered with the Illinois Ethnic Consultation; Operation Hunger partnered with the American Jewish Committee; the Oudtshoorn Resource and Advice Centre partnered with the Jewish Labor Committee; the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness partnered with the World Without War Council; and the Women for Peaceful Change Now partnered with the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.
PSA struggled after the death of Rustin, who was its irreplaceable inspiration, but it laid the groundwork for NED’s incipient program in South Africa, affording many lessons. It demonstrated the model of solidarity and small grants; the subtle and cumulative power of civil society; the possibility of broad coalitions spanning the political, racial and sectoral spectrum; and how non-violence, democracy and human rights might be promoted at the grassroots, including through activities ostensibly focused on social welfare, the arts, and religion. [4]
[1] NED Statement of Principles and Objectives, p. 3.
2 Email from Carl Gershman, June 19, 2024.
[2] Bayard Rustin, “Our Next Step in South Africa,” Newsweek, October 20, 1986, p. 9.
[3] Bayard hired me to work as executive director for PSA from January 1986 to December 1987. I then joined the staff of NED in January 1988 as program officer for Africa.
[4] Another consequential South African initiative led by Rustin at this time was support to the End Conscription
Campaign, which was instrumental in pressuring the apartheid government to pull troops out of Namibia and Angola. I served as a liaison between the New York Friends Group and Ivan Toms, a founder of the ECC and an early South African gay rights activist. The ECC conducted an early awareness raising tour of the US with support from the Friends Group. The role of LGBTI activists such as Toms in the anti-apartheid movement is noteworthy, and relevant to South Africa’s tolerance on the issue. Others of my acquaintance mentioned in this article include Marian Nell of the Human Awareness Programme, who was PSA’s chief strategic advisor, and Rev. Tietsi Thandekiso, a guiding spirit of the King-Luthuli Centre.