Why Africa should not ask anything more of Obama

Two weeks ago, we were walking through the Sarit Centre when we saw a tableful of (now) US president-elect Barack Obama badges.

We stopped and asked how come Obama buttons were being sold there, knowing that it was against US law for foreigners to contribute to its campaigns.

The young lady at the table told us it wasn’t to raise money for Obama, but for a Kenyan children’s charity — and they were selling fast. Our youngest daughter got one.

On Wednesday morning, I got up very early to watch the inevitable on CNN — an Obama victory. Later, my Obama badge-owning daughter came down for breakfast and found me waiting to do the morning school ride. She was wearing the button on her sweater.

She asked me who had won. I told her victory was Obama’s. She jumped in excitement and ran around the breakfast table.

It was 6.30am, not an hour when we do celebratory somersaults. She wasn’t alone. In many parts of the world, as in the US itself, millions of people were soon celebrating the victory.

I asked her about the Obama button. Many children at her school, she said, had an Obama button and it was a day when very many would be showing up with them.

Why is Obama’s victory important apart from the “ethnic” affiliation we might feel that, because his father was a Kenyan, he is one of us? Will Obama’s victory put ugali on our tables? many people have asked. To which the definitive answer has to be “No”.

A Ugandan friend finally nailed it down for me. “Obama doesn’t owe Africa anything, and even if he had ugali to give, he shouldn’t,” he said.

“He has already given us the best thing he can — inspiration. It is the only thing that can endure for Africa from his historic victory”. So, he argued, Africa should not ask anything more of Obama. He has already given her continent more than there is to give.

I read hundreds of articles and news stories about the US election and Obama. One of them stands out the most. It was an October 21 article in the Daily Mail (of London) by the maverick Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who endorsed Obama.

“If Obama wins, then black people the world over will be able to see how a gifted man has been able to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling,” he wrote.

“If Obama wins, then it will be simply fatuous to claim that there are no black role models in politics or government, because there is no higher role model than the President of the United States.

“If Barack Hussein Obama is successful next month, then we could even see the beginning of the end of race-based politics, with all the grievance-culture and special interest groups and political correctness that come with it.

“If Obama wins then he will have established that being black is as relevant to your ability to do a hard job as being left-handed or ginger-haired…”