The present political uncertainty in Rhodesia has complex origins. Until 1965 the country was a member of the British Commonwealth. It enjoyed “Responsible Government” (in the constitutional sense) which allowed its politicians much latitude in running affairs to suit their own desires. The black majority of the population had virtually no voice in the government. Britain retained a few residual legal rights arising from the situation when Rhodesia was colonized in 1890. In 1965 the Rhodesian politicians representing the white population of under 250,000 renounced their obligations in terms of these British rights and proclaimed their country a sovereign, independent power. The British government responded to the unilateral declaration of independence (U.D.I.) by imposing an economic blockade on Rhodesia. Rhodesia's financial assets abroad were frozen and its export trade embargoed. Its access to foreign money markets to raise investment capital was blocked.

People of African descent in America occupy a singular position in relation to the race problems faced by Blacks in South Africa. Many Afro-Americans have had firsthand experience with the practice of race discrimination either in its blatant Jim Crow manifestations or in its more covert institutional forms. This common experience with race discrimination in South Africa and the United States makes it possible, for example, to correlate W.E.B. Dubois' description of the warring “double consciousness” of the black American made in 1903 with the expressions of frustration written by Albert Luthuli in 1962. This commonality also establishes a basis from which a meaningful assessment can be made regarding the historical role of black Americans in the race issue of South Africa.

To make a case for greater American involvement in Africa is to take cognizance of what has gone before — eclectic embrace followed by selective disengagement. The Nixon Administration has opted for a policy of designating certain target countries for bilateral assistance and political cultivation. The itineraries of American public figures from the Vice President and Secretary of State to the astronauts and Mrs. Nixon tell us where the emphases are being placed: on the two long-standing areas of concern, Liberia and Ethiopia; on Africa's most populous state, Nigeria; on one of its larger states, Zaire, and on the home of one of Africa's senior pragmatic statesmen, Kenya. Somewhat more peripheral interest is maintained in Ghana, which has moved into the column of “reasonable” regimes. Most recently the situation in Sudan has dazzled U.S. policymakers with visions of picking up chips from the Soviets and conjuring up the type of Cold War determinant of involvement popular in the 1960s.

Africa's participation in the international system, by whatever measures it is gauged, skyrocketed during the 1960s from a level close to zero to its present extensity, intensity, and complexity. The difficulty of analyzing the American response to Africa's participation arises from at least two intellectual — but not merely intellectual — problems: First, there have been many different — and differentiated — American responses rather than a single one. Second, much of what is often described as American responses actually may have been triggered by American initiatives to which Africans responded, setting off a kind of chain reaction of reciprocal interactions, which have neither a clearly discernible beginning nor a definable end in time.

China's foreign policy toward Africa has been of major concern to the great powers ever since the time that China embarked on an active policy in the African continent. By its action, China presented a direct challenge to Soviet leadership in the Third World, and at the same time put an end to the seclusion the United States had tried to impose on the Communist regime.

One of the strongest impulses that led to the creation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 was the desire of free Africa to hasten independence in colonized Africa. When the leaders of independent Africa convened to inaugurate the first international regional organization of its kind in Africa, there seemed total agreement on the principle of self-determination. What Kwame Nkrumah had proclaimed six years earlier upon Ghana's accession to independence was echoed in the keynote address of the Ethiopian Emperor: “Our liberty is meaningless unless all Africans are free. Our brothers in the Rhodesias … Mozambique … cry out in anguish for our support and assistance.”