Africa a steep climb for the Obama presidency

Barack Obama’s November 4 victory as the first US president of African descent (his father was Kenyan) is poised to place Africa firmly in the American policy.

But Obama is likely to echo Julius Caeser’s words to his African wife, Egypt’s attractive Queen Cleopatra: “My ambitions are Roman ambitions.” Obama’s ambitions are American ambitions, not African ambitions.

Obama’s African ancestry, however, is likely to draw the US closer to Africa than under any other occupant of White House before him. The US’s “African” presidency will give the world’s super-power an unprecedented moral stature and greater sway in its relations with the continent.

This moral force will give Obama’s America an edge over China in the increasingly stiff competition for Africa’s strategic resources and markets — called by African-American academic Margaret Lee as “the 21st Century scramble for Africa”. But Africa’s problems are deep and complex, making it a steep climb for the new president.

America’s Mandela moment

“The problem of the 20th century,” declared the renowned pan-Africanist W.E.B Dubois, “is the problem of the colour line”. Obama’s election has blurred the line, marking a critical milestone in race relations. The US consul-general in Cape Town, Alberta Mayberry, celebrated Obama’s historic confirmation as US president-elect as “America’s Mandela moment”.

The diplomat was referring to the striking parallels between Obama as America’s first black president and Nelson Mandela as the first post-apartheid black president, signifying the triumph of the democratic ideals over entrenched racial bigotry. Obama’s election poignantly signifies the black people’s long walk from the slave ship to White House.

Indeed, in a wider sense, the Obama moment is the world’s Mandela moment. It makes serious dents on Africa’s image as a “dark continent.” It also drowns recent brazen calls, especially by South Africa’s right wing, for Africa’s recolonisation. The victory might also blunt anti-black racial offensives, which have triggered riots especially in Europe.

In Obama, the Luther King dream in whiche one is judged “not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character” has been vindicated. Meritocracy has prevailed over racial or ethnic biases, which have dogged most Africans across the world.

Despite the crippling economic slowdown, Obama has to halt democracy’s slide into a recession. The tidal wave of democratic transitions in the 1990s turned 60 per cent of the world’s independent states into democracies, most of them in Africa. But as political scientist Larry Diamond warns, a powerful authoritarian undertow has significantly slowed down this democratic wave.

A toxic mix of electoral fraud, violence, patronage and corruption has stifled democracy in Obama’s ancestral continent. Accelerating this democratic rollback is what historian Jerry Muller describes as “the clash of peoples” — a brutal surge of ethnic nationalism as a force poised to drive global politics for generations.

The collapse of racial and ethnic boundaries in Obama’s elections has inspired civic consciousness likely to counter racism, ethnicity and xenophobia. Some of the countries affected are Africa’s promising democracies. In Kenya, post-election ethnic violence early this year killed 1,500 people.

Most of 350,000 others displaced by the blitz are still left in the cold. A wave of xenophobic attacks on African nationals in South Africa in May left 65 people dead and displaced thousands of others.

Sudan’s Darfur region remains a veritable ethnic killing field, Somalia has clan-based pirates and the Democratic Republic of Congo which staged a historic election in 2006, the first in 40 years, has recently exploded into ethnic war between Tutsi rebels and soldiers protecting Hutu civilians in the east.

Many expect Obama to use America’s diplomatic muscle to break the diplomatic deadlock in Zimbabwe. Octogenarian President Robert Mugabe has exploited the Euro-Africa “racial” divide and residual nationalism to hold onto power in a country with an economy on its knees.

But Obama’s political thinkers have to sponsor a better way out of Africa’s democratic crisis than the power-sharing arrangement now in vogue, which has rewarded killers, obliterated the opposition, fed corruption and put genuine democracy into cold storage.

His message of unity strikes at the heart of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations”, the ideological ammunition of the Bush-era militarism and war-mongering, which has pushed world security to the cliff-edge and nearly brought Wall Street down.

America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a third one looming over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, have strained Washington’s relations with Africa.

The continent is in the eye of the storm of the US-led global war on terrorism. Kenya, hit by terrorists in 1998 and 2002, is even a softer target under Obama, whose presidency is determined to hunt down Osama bin Laden.

As the first American president with non-American relatives living in the remote corners of Africa, Obama’s Kenyan family is a soft target for revenge attacks. Urgent security measures to protect this extraordinary rural family comes as an additional economic burden to Kenya.

Obama’s African heritage equips him with the requisite cultural sensitivity to confront the continent’s challenges. In the hyped politics of “African renaissance”, he is a credible member of the venerated African diaspora, widely seen as a key ingredient in Africa’s economic recovery.

The African Union’s Economic, Social and cultural Council has defined the diaspora as Africa’s “sixth region.”

As a black American president, Obama now ranks as the most powerful member of this diaspora. More than any other US president before him, Obama has the extraordinary opportunity to assertively engage with Africa’s most complex and sensitive crises like in Zimbabwe and Sudan safely below the radar of racial sensitivities.

Thabo Mbeki’s mantra

As an “African’” he can invoke former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s mantra of “African solutions to African problems”. Like former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, Obama has the “cultural licence” to attend AU high-level meetings and summits, which his non-black predecessors could not.

Obama’s “soft power” approach to global issues has the potential of endearing him to African critics of the Bush-era militarism. “The true strength of our nation”, Obama has declared, “comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.”

Dr Kagwanja is the president of the Africa Policy Institute Pretoria/Nairobi; www.africa.org, and fellow at the University of Pretoria; www.africapi.org .