In June of 1966, Robert F. Kennedy ’48, then a junior senator from New York, traveled to South Africa upon the invitation of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) to deliver the annual Day of Affirmation speech at the University of Cape Town. He opened his speech with these words: “I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”

The comparative implications of his opening words—between the common histories and conditions of racial injustice in the United States and South Africa—had an immediate impact among South Africans at the time and indeed highlighted the reason for his invitation. The parallels between both countries had been widely recognized among activists by then, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Chief Albert Luthuli—then president of the African National Congress (ANC) and the first African recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1960—having issued a co-authored statement against apartheid in 1962. King himself had received an invitation to speak in South Africa by NUSAS, but was denied a visa by the South African government.

If these connections and their meaning appear decidedly historical at this point, they should not. The national elections in South Africa this past April have underscored both the achievements of the post-apartheid period—celebrating 10 years this year—as well as persistent problems—economic disparity key among them—that have maintained a discomforting continuity with the past. In the inaugural address for his second term as president, ANC leader Thabo Mbeki made a similar point, noting the brevity of time since 1994 and the end of apartheid, and yet the irreversible path that South Africa now follows: “It is today impossible to imagine a South Africa that is not a democratic South Africa.”

Such a predicament should not be unfamiliar. I read these words recently in the context of also having heard a talk given by Manning Marable, the eminent African-American historian at Columbia University, as part of the 2004 DuBois Lectures at the W.E.B DuBois Institute. Marable’s final lecture noted the shift in the politics of affirmative action that had taken place during the latter half of the 1990s and insisted that the current generation of students re-engage with the concerns of his generation. As he reflected at one point, his own personal experience with Jim Crow was thankfully part of the past—and yet it was an instructive, pointed lesson that cannot be replicated to galvanize contemporary civil rights activism. Perhaps South Africa can provide this contemporary catalyst.

The issues that South Africa currently faces—high unemployment, widespread poverty, the HIV/AIDS pandemic—can be assigned to local and regional circumstances, and yet many of these issues have their origins in a system of racial injustice not dissimilar to one that took hold in the U.S. The history of race and racism is of course an international one, containing dimensions that are, more often than not, difficult to account for within a single narrative. And yet a shortcoming of the American academy has been the persistence of American exceptionalism and the often inward focus of multiculturalism, an emphasis on difference rather than connection. These themes have only recently begun to be complicated through models of comparative history, diaspora and inter-group solidarity.

The recent elections in South Africa and the tenth anniversary of the end of apartheid should be a reminder, then, of common pasts and the ongoing need to engage with their legacies, here and abroad. Two separate actions by Harvard this past year—addressing the issue of class differences among Harvard applicants and emphasizing international experience as a key part of undergraduate education—in different ways possess the potential to be significant steps in this engagement. And if there is the suggestion that this commentary implies yet another rationale for U.S. intervention of a kind in yet another part of the world—a pattern of thought that has hopefully reached its limit—this should be quickly dispelled. Social activists and their lessons of struggle must have their day too.

Christopher J. Lee teaches African history in the history department and is a fellow at the W. E. B. DuBois Institute and the Carr Center for Human Rights. He has lived and worked in South Africa, as well as in Malawi, Botswana and Mozambique.