TransProtest: Robinson's raiders

Just who was this man, and where did he get off telling South Africa's Ambassador how his country should be run? No matter. Randall Robinson, 6 ft. 5 in. of polished brass, kept boring in. Accompanied by several civil rights advocates, including District of Columbia Delegate Walter Fauntroy, Robinson went to the South African embassy on Massachusetts Street in Washington and demanded of then Ambassador Bernardus Fourie that the Pretoria government release its political prisoners and extend civil rights to blacks. Fourie demanded that his visitors leave, but Robinson and the others refused. Arrested, they spent the night in a D.C. jail.

That incident a year ago this week started one of the longest continuous demonstrations in U.S. history. Picketing and arrests organized by Robinson's Washington-based TransAfrica lobby occur every weekday in front of the South African embassy. They have ignited flares of protest in 26 other U.S. cities, pushing the Reagan Administration into toughening its mild "constructive engagement" policy toward South Africa.

Among the 3,500 protesters who have been arrested, paid fines or spent short periods in jail are 23 U.S. Congressmen, Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker, Singer Harry Belafonte, Amy Carter and two of Ethel and Robert Kennedy's children, Rory and Douglas. As the protests spread, the House and Senate introduced bills calling for action against South Africa, and Ronald Reagan came up with his own list of sanctions.

Now Robinson and TransAfrica have undertaken another ambitious project: collecting a million signatures denouncing the Rev. Jerry Falwell's accommodating view of the South African government, to be presented next month in a "freedom letter" to the Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu. TransAfrica had garnered 200,000 signatures by last week, and 50 members of Congress have volunteered to collect at least 1,000 additional signatures each from their constituents.

All told, not a bad year's work for Robinson, TransAfrica and its spin-off Free South Africa Movement. Working out of a basement office in southeast Washington, Robinson has evolved into a black leader to be reckoned with. South African spokesmen predictably deny his effectiveness. Says Embassy Press Attaché Pieter Swanepoel: "The activities have had no impact on government decision-making policy. How could they, when they are taking place so far away from where those policies are formed?" But U.S. Senators and Representatives who voted for sanctions against apartheid enthusiastically acknowledge that Robinson's cool, calm competence helped rally black and white Americans against apartheid. Said one congressional staffer: "Everybody can tell that Randall Robinson is no bomb thrower."