Ali's "Whipping"

Trouble on a Mission Implausible

It had to be the most bizarre diplomatic mission in recent U.S. history. Two weeks ago, Jimmy Carter asked former Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali to undertake a five-nation African tour (Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia and Senegal) as his special representative to seek support for a boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games. Ali, who was traveling in India, accepted the assignment. By the time he had spent an hour on African soil, however, he was floundering like a Golden Gloves novice against a ring-wise pro.

Arriving in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Ali immediately demonstrated that he had not been well briefed for his mission. He was apparently unaware that the Soviet Union had been backing revolutionary liberation movements on the continent. Why, some local reporters also demanded, should Africa boycott the Moscow Olympics when four years ago the U.S. had opposed an African Olympic boycott called to protest New Zealand's sporting links with South Africa? Ali fumbled for an answer and found none.

The former champ, who was hurt to discover that Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere would not receive him, threatened to call off his trip. Said he: "If I'm to be looked at as an Uncle Tom or a traitor or someone against my black brothers, I want out 'cause that's not my purpose."

Then he was off to Nairobi, Kenya, where he accused Carter of sending him to Africa to take a "whipping" over U.S. policy toward South Africa. He continued:

"There are two bad white men in the world: the Russian white man and the American white man. They're the baddest two men in the history of the world.

If these white men start fighting, then us little black folks are going to be caught in the middle, so we all got to help stop these white folks fighting."

In Washington, Carter Administration officials tried to defend Ali's Mission Implausible. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance gamely told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, "I think he has been an effective and eloquent spokesman."

And who was responsible for dispatching the former champ to Africa? "A lot of people had the same idea at the same time," allowed Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Richard Moose, adding that the President himself had approved the mission.

Nobody seemed to realize that to send Ali to Africa at a time when diplomatic heavyweights like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Clark Clifford were pleading the U.S. cause in the Middle East and India would be seen as a racial insult.

Asked one Tanzanian official: "Would you send Chris Evert to negotiate with London?"

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