Wonderful piece from his father's native land.
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Good news from Kenya is only Obama
Story by HAMADOU TIDIANE SY
Publication Date: 2/16/2008
NATION Correspondent
DAKAR, Friday
For the past five weeks, Kenya has featured prominently in the West African media.
First, through the post election crisis mediated by the West African diplomat from Ghana, Kofi Annan; second; through the US Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, now the “little” wonder of today’s American politics.
Post electoral violence may always be a preferred topic in the “world news” section of newspapers, but never before has any US primaries been covered so closely.
The focus is, of course, Obama.
“While his father’s country of origin, Kenya, is sowing the seeds of a bloody political crisis, the Illinois Senator is flying from one victory to the other in the American primaries”, wrote Le Pays, one of the main private dailies in Burkina Faso.
The newspaper depicts the contrast between the crazy “dream” on its way to become true for the little “Kenyan boy”, and the way the East African nation is “plunging into chaos and violence”.
In fact Senator Obama, seen from this side of the continent, has become a “dream”, not only for Kenyans, but for many Africans, entangled in daily hardships, unable to have dreams of their own, barred from the road to success and self fulfilment by so many seemingly insurmountable hurdles. Thus, it is understandable that commentaries about the “little” Kenyan-American abound in all publications. The relatively young politician seems to have been adopted by all Africans, beyond traditional boundaries.
All forget that if Obama can claim, in such a successful manner, the candidacy for the top job in the most powerful country in the world, it is first and foremost because he is an “American citizen” and, second because he has espoused the American core values. Otherwise he would not be a US Senator, let alone a hopeful candidate!
Yet columnists prefer to ignore those basics and to call him the “Kenyan”, as if to justify somehow he is Africa’s contribution to the progress of America.
And all those specialists of the “tribal” issue in Kenya ignore the question: To what ethnic group does he belong? But the systematically ask the question when talking about Raila Odinga or Mwai Kibaki.
In fact, far beyond his native US land and Kenyan ancestry, Obama seems to symbolise a new hope for all whose hopes have been stolen.
One Senegalese newspaper, Le Quotidien called him the “blessed Barack Hussein Obama”, prominently adding his middle name in a bid to bring him closer to the hearts of the majority Muslims”.
Why Obama deserves to be called an “African” without any ethnic attribute while Odinga or Kibaki don’t, boggles the mind.
But then there is the saying, “successes have too many parents while failures remain so often orphans”. Exactly. |
