The Obama Win: Can Africa Learn Anything
By Ralph Geeplay

The epic American presidential election cycle just ended, was the longest in living world history in any democracy, and should make the Guinness Book of world records. The tenacity and fierceness with which the hotly contested American presidency was waged would certainly put roman gladiators to shame. But it was a beautiful spectacle. Yes it was. Before the world’s naked eyes once again the greatness of Americanism shone like a beacon in a distant sky. The lows and blows to which neo-conservatism and the Bush administration sunk United States prestige and soft power in world affairs during his eight years in office can now hoped to be redeemable under a president elect who himself admits ‘I was not the likeliest candidate for this office.” His message of change and hope and his ‘improbable American journey,’ inspired not just the American people, but Africans who see Obama as their own through his direct paternal and fraternal linkage to the continent, something many African Americans like Obama lacked. But what can Africa learn from the improbable Obama win?

While little progress has been made in a post 1960 independent Africa, the continent largely is still a stagnant overburden place where a message of change is even truer than anytime since Western European colonialists ceded authority about 50 years ago to a bunch of African leaders whose passion for greed, power, sectarianism and tribalism exceeds the requisite norms necessary to build any sustainable functioning democracy anywhere. Today Africa wallows in debt, poverty wars and despotism. If change is any mantra glean from Obama’s successful presidential run, I see no reason why some leaders on the African continent have been in power for up to forty years. Don’t tell me I don’t know what I am talking about, because here’s Gabon 73 years old Oman Bongo planning another bid at his country presidency in 2012, and Libya Muammar Kaddafi sharing the record for being in power since 1969, 40 years apiece! Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak 26 years, Angola’s Eduardo dos Santo, and Congo Republic Denis Saussou Nguesso 30 years apiece, and Western Africa Guinea’s sick chain smoking president Lassana Conte 25 years. Even shameful is Meles Zenawi almost two decades in power while his country host the African Union headquarters. The last elections he held were marred in political violence while throng of opposition leaders and students went to jail for demanding a fairer outcome of poll results. Leaders like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is a poster child of what is wrong with the continent but look deeper and you will see a carcass that runs a belt around the hopes and aspirations of the African people. No wonder why critics who lambaste the west and so-called rights defenders for double standards, because not until a leader like Mugabe reaches the peak of brutality do you hear their voices loudly. No functioning democracy succeed where the will of an entire people are constantly subjected to the whims of men, whose agenda is a selfish individualism clothe in graft, politically motivated violence, and old ideas. Little kids and old grey-haired men who danced barefooted to the Obama victory across Africa, if anything want change too. A change they too can believe in. to rise Africa must tap its best talent, that means giving way to a new era where ideas and debates rule, rather than guns and bullying old men still steep in the ways of the colonial masters the once detested.

The rise of Barack Obama was an American coup. From Bangalore to Banjul and from Liberia to Lithuania, ordinary citizens of all stripes rejoiced and sang for America. Part of the reason why Obama and America see this peak interest in this election cycle from the world, is not because he is just black, but because his victory is two folds: first if this is not the ultimate fulfillment of the America dream that the founding document promised its citizens when it speaks of the ‘inalienable rights’ of all regardless of creed, even as some were still slaves and servants, then tell me what more? And second, as a minority and black what more could a mature democracy that is tolerant and vibrant offer? Wasn‘t it glaring after so long a vetting process that that minority was the brightest, the best and the most qualify for the office. And here, in this American elections all countries and men would witness the true meaning of participatory democracy with poignant questions for us all: Will we in our lifetime ever see a British Indian or a color of British origin as Prime Minister of a royal England? Will South Africa ever elect a white or color president in a majority black populated nation who represents the aspirations of all South Africans, will the Tutsi and Hutus ever put their political differences aside and build a sustainable democracy across the great lakes region? And will the greater middle eastern region ever see peace in our time? Will the minorities and the weak be protected in all countries that seek democratic ideals the world over. Farfetched as these propositions might sound, who would have taught when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat few years ago and when Lyndon Banes Johnson signed the civil rights act did it entered the collective imagination of anyone, just Anyone that would we see today? No one, except those who dare to dream like M.L. King. But “yes we did!”

If Obama is a brilliant orator, he is an even brilliant writer. In his second memoir “T
he Audacity of Hope,” he summons the treatise and the foundation the of the great republican government that gave birth to modern America. Speaking of the Declaration of Independence he says “Not every American may be able to recite them; few if asked could traced the genesis…behind the declaration, that we are born into this world that we are born free, all of us, that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can’t be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make our lives what we will…” still he continues, “It orient us, sets our course each and every day…it is an idea that some portion of the world still rejects ----and for which an even larger portion of humanity finds scant evidence in their daily lives.” Just as the world watches this epochal moment in history so must it learn from the great story that has been Obama and America‘s!