Obama and what africa expects

Keynote Address at the U.S. – Africa Policy Forum on “Projecting Change and Continuity Under the Obama Administration”, Howard University, Washington D. C., 19 February 2009 .

Professor Shadrack B. O. Gutto
Director and Chair: Centre for African Renaissance Studies, University of South Africa (UNISA);
Professor Extraordinaire, Faculty of Humanities, Tshwane University of Technology; and
Non-Executive Chairperson, Maluleke Seriti Makume Matlala (Attorneys) Inc., Pretoria and Johannesburg

I wish to extend to you all warm greetings from Africa. I am indeed honoured and privileged to have been invited by Africa Action and Howard University to this important forum for a conversation that I believe will be informative and may contribute to progressive policy development in the US and in Africa.
Obama the intellectual President and the historical context of relations between Africa and the European/American worlds
In the Theses on Feuerbach written in 1845 Karl Marx penned this very telling sentence: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”.
Now, Barrack Hussein Obama, the first Black and the first African-American President of the United States of America not a leftist, let alone a Marxist by world standards. His philosophy of change is therefore not just ideological – it is something he strongly believes in. In this regard, he, like the millions of Americans who voted for him, believed that humanity has not reached the end of history. People can still change the world and make it a better place.
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Since he won the election I am one of those who believe that he has already made significant change. His victory was historic and many black people wherever they may be have acquired some sense of pride and dignity. He used peaceful means to fight and win a major social and mental war for humanity. All of a sudden, we discover that there are a million-plus black citizens of Iraq who are beginning to mobilize for recognition and equality (Mail & Guardian, January 30 – February 5 2009). In the US itself things are not quite the same – the Republic Party in reported to have embarked on a hitherto unthinkable move by electing an African American, Michael Steele, as chairman of the Republican National Committee.
However, even before his election to the highest office in the USA he had made a mark in Africa and among black people all over the world. On 18 March 2008 in the thick of his campaign against the then better known and well endowed Senator Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic Party’s Candidature for the Presidency of the USA he disagreed with aspects of the vitriolic messages uttered by his Pastor, Rev. Wright on racism against black people in the fabric of society in the US. Typical of leaders with courage to tell the truth, he seized on the occasion to deliver a sobering message to America that America needed to change the entrenched culture of cultivated silence about the reality of race and racism in the US. He refused to encourage continuation with the harmful philosophy and ideology of color-blindness that Professor Patricia J Williams so craftily depicts in her book: The Alchemy of Race and Right – diary of a law Professor. Instead, he delivered a public lecture on race and racism that belonged to vintage critical race theory school of thought among some African American and Latin/Latino Crits legal scholars represented by contributors in the book edited by Kimberle Crenshaw et al, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995)). It is not surprising that his speech was tabled and discussed in a University Senate meeting at my university and that we published it in the International Journal of African Renaissance Studies, Vol. 3 Number 1 (2008)188-126.
Since his inauguration, he has yet to withdraw from confirmation hearings in Senate of his nominee for high public office on account of the nominee’s thoughts and ideology alone, the way President Bill Clinton hurriedly and shamefully withdrew the name of Professor Lani Guinier, the Author of The Tyranny of the Majority – Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy (1994), on June 3rd 1993. She had been nominated for the humble position of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
Being such a learned gentleman and a formidable intellectual, he must be familiar with seminal works such as Howard University’s African Diaspora scholar and former prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Professor Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery (1944, 1994 and 2005). The book explains the significant contributions the blood and seat of African slaves made to accumulation of wealth that fueled the Western European and American industrial revolutions. I wish to assume that he is equally familiar with the works of the other giant intellectual of the African Diaspora from Guyana but who lived and worked in Tanzania, Walter Rodney: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972, 1974, 1982 and 1989).
The Williams’ and Rodney’s books reveal the truth a bout complicated relations between Africa and European world order of which the America’s have become part. Such knowledge helps the African in Africa and the African descendant abroad gain the sense of worth and achievement and not only the pain and suffering that were visited and continue to be visited on them in hidden forms; they turn weakness into strength and give hope and dignity. Even assuming that Obama may not have read them, he has demonstrated an understanding and a sense of history that builds awareness, confidence and determination to overcome formidable adversity.
That the first few presidents of the United States of America, many of them among “the Founding Fathers”, were owners of black (read African American) slaves is part of the truth about the history of US democracy . How far will an African American, the symbol of enslaved human property of the white “Founding Fathers”, now occupying the White House, forestall the pace of the USA’s steady decline as a world power in moral, economic and military terms? If his administration succeeds in forestalling and even reversing the decline, not only Americans but also Africa and all her descendants – more than a sixth of the world’s total population – will no doubt rejoice.
When the world congregates in Geneva later this year ( in April) to review progress made since the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, it is hoped that the US delegation will participate and not run away as they did in Durban under the pretext that the deliberations were too critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. I was a participant in the Durban conference and from my experience there I can confidently say that the US delegation was virulently opposed to discussions around apology and reparations to the victims and descendants of the crime of slavery and slave trade, among other racism-related issues such as the slaughter of First Nation Americans. Vigils were held to highlight the tragedy of the US official stance.
The rapid decline of the moral standing of the USA in world affairs can be partly attributed to the official behaviour in Durban; it is not only Afghanistan and Iraq.
Obama’s immediate Kenyan-African Lineage – what does it mean?
Our reveling in history making needs to be tempered with some critical reflection on opportunities and threats that arise, not from the person of this phenomenon leader Obama but rather from the fact that he is the president of the USA.
Let us start at home in Africa. Obama takes pride in the fact that he is the son of a black Kenyan from the Luo nation or ethnic group and his mother is a white European American from the State of Kansas. He was brought up by his white grandparents. The Luo are a large conglomeration of Nilotic people who are found in Kenya, Uganda, Southern Sudan and Tanzania. This area of Africa with which he has ethnic bonds will be expecting greater positive attention from Washington, especially in the area of conflict resolution through peaceful means, fair trade and partnership in development that is sensitive to environmental considerations. As with elsewhere in Africa, Obama’s US will of course be competing for influence with the erstwhile colonial powers in the region and their combined force in the European Union, and, of course, the rising powers, especially China and India.
For the African continent as a whole Obama needs to constructively engage and to support some of Africa’s common agenda especially: regional political, economic and social integration; telecommunications and infrastructural development; the evolution towards an African Union Government; and the democratization and reform of international institutions. His administration is especially expected to support Africa’s democratic demand for two permanent seats at the UN Security Council. Africa also will demand that the US unequivocally abandons military adventurism in Africa and especially the policy of establishing military bases in Africa and the Bush administration’s plan to establish the US Africa Command. The AU is opposed to the US Africa Command.
Of the US military bases in and around Africa, the Chagos Islands, especially Diego Garcia where it collaborates with the United Kingdom of (the once) Great Britain –also require very urgent attention. The Chagosians are facing genocide. They were removed from the island by the British, with some being dumped in Mauritius and others taken to Britain against their will. They want to return. Their legal battle in the British courts is on-going.
As far as the broader African Agenda to create a Union Government for the continent and to attain continental integration, the journey is going to be long, and requires leaders who are well informed and are compassionate, visionary and made of steel.
The AU’s historical mission and strategic constitutive mandate is to promote unity, solidarity and cohesion and cooperation among the peoples of Africa and African States through, amongst others, the objective to ”accelerate political and socio-economic integration of the continent” and to “co-ordinate and harmonise the policies between the existing and future Regional Economic Communities [RECs] for the gradual attainment of the objectives of the Union” .
In 2005 the AU Assembly constituted a Committee of Seven Heads of State and Government to outline the elements of a proposal on a Union Government. In July 2006, at the 6th Ordinary Summit of the AU in Banjul, The Gambia, the Committee’s Report, An African Union Government: Towards the United States of Africa, was tabled for discussion. The report concluded, inter alia, that a Union Government was feasible. Outlining the constitutive elements of such a government, the Banjul Report both suggested a roadmap towards the attainment of this objective and recommended 2015 as the target for its attainment.
The 8th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the AU held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 29 to 30 January 2007 decided to discuss the Union Government at its 9th Ordinary Session in Accra, Ghana; and the Assembly also called for inclusive consultations at the national and regional levels in preparations for this debate (Assembly/AU/Dec.156 (VIII)).
The 9th Ordinary Session of the Assembly held in Accra, Ghana, from 1 to 3 July 2007, adopted the Accra Declaration, following the Grand Debate on the UGA. Among other things, there was agreement on accelerating the economic and political integration of the Continent, including the formation of the UGA. Despite consensus on the broad objectives, there was however considerable divergence of perspectives on a number of issues, including implications of the UGA on sovereignty of the member States of the AU and the timeframes for the Roadmap.
The Accra Summit set up a Ministerial Committee with Terms of Reference requiring consideration of:
• the content of the concept of the UGA and its relations with national governments;
• the impact of the UGA on sovereignty of member States;
• the relationship between the UGA and the RECs;
• elaboration of the Roadmap; and
• resources implications.
The issue of sovereignty for example is an issue that needs to be understood in the contest of the various bilateral and multilateral agreements and institutional arrangements that African States engage in and with. By agreeing to participate in such relations States of necessity exercise their sovereign rights and powers voluntarily for the collective good – in other words, belonging to the RECs or the AU and committing to abide by the respective regional and continental treaties, policies and programmes does not diminish sovereignty. Membership of the AU for example means that a State Member voluntarily agrees that the Union may intervene in the territory of any Member State to confront serious situations such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In effect it means that each and every Member State, except the locus of the serious situation, would be taking part or would be represented in such an intervention. Similarly, voluntary membership of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) which is already functioning and having real impact enhances rather than undermines the sovereignty of the countries that undergo the review process.
As far as the Road Map is concerned, timeframes need to be linked to the achievement of certain concrete objectives. A Road Map cannot be based on wishes and dreams, however noble they may be. It is in this regard that the Road Map originally envisaged in the Banjul Report was unrealistic. It is for the same reason that the timeframes proposed by those in favour of immediate establishment of the UGA are not realisable because issues such as the harmonisation and rationalisation of the RECs – the building blocs – and the finalisation of establishing and operationalising the AU principal organs like the Court of Justice and Human Rights and the financial institutions needs to take precedence.
As far as operationalisation of the AU organs is concerned, the evolution of the PAP into an elected legislative organ should be prioritised. The issue of resources for operating the AU and its conversion into even a larger UGA should also inform the timeframes for the Road Map. Similarly, popularisation of the move towards the UGA among the masses is critical to engender ownership by the people and for people. Such an exercise has hardly been commenced in most of 53 the Member States, with the exception that some parliaments/legislatures represented in the Pan-African Parliament may have introduced the idea in the national legislative assemblies or parliaments.
As of January 2008, some recommendations on the way forward made by the Ministerial Committee appear to be reasonable while others are still at the level of generalities. The recommendation that foreign affairs and defence could be prioritised as areas of jurisdictional competence of the UGA is feasible because already there are instances where the Assembly has adopted common African positions and agenda on the relations between Africa and the rest of the world; and the Peace and Security Council of the AU has acquired limited but strategically important functionality that have been manifest in for example, the Dafur region, Sudan, and Somalia.
On the Road Map, the Ministerial Committee surprisingly agreed with the three-phased approach contained in the Banjul Study (The Obasanjo Report):
(i) establishment of the Union Government (2006-2009);
(ii) consolidation of the Union Government (2009-2012); and
(iii) the establishment of the United States of Africa (2012-2015).
The Ministerial Committee however qualified its views by indicating that the three-phases could take up to 25 years to realise. This effectively means that the 2015 target date for completion of the process of establishing the UGA is unrealistic.
For the Obama administration, the starting point could be an invitation extended to President Obama from the AU Assembly of Heads of States and Government to address one of their summits during his first term in office. The objective would be to formally acknowledge his achievement and, perhaps more importantly, to secure his support in the development of Africa’s regional integration and eventually the establishment of the UGA – not another USA! The USA could also build genuine partnerships and solidarity with Africa in Africa’s struggle to combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS and to meet the challenges of environmental degradation and climate change.
In 2003 at the Maputo Summit, the AU Assembly amended the regional treaty to incorporate a provision that recognises (claims) the African diaspora(s) as Africa’s sixth region. How Obama’s administration will respond to this is still to be ascertained. It requires a discussion among African Americans, the recent African immigrants to the US and the African-Latino-Americans. The AU-African Diaspora Summit that was supposed to be held in South Africa in 2008 was postponed to sometime in 2009. It may be expected that the Obama administration will at least have an Observer presence.
Obama and Kenya specifically
During Obama’ campaign, Kenya – his ancestral paternal home country – was in turmoil following the attempt by the regime-in-power then and the country’s election managing institution to falsify and manipulate the results of the presidential election. Lest the citizens of the USA forget, it may be prudent to point out that the sanctity of elections, popularly expressed in modern democracy-speak as “free and fair elections”, had already been seriously compromised in the USA in the George Bush versus Al Gore presidential electoral context of 2000. That historic American fiasco marked the acceleration of the George Bush-led decline of USA moral global influence that the half-African half-European American brother Barack, wants to forestall, if not reverse!
Yes, Kenya was in turmoil in the early part of 2008. Had Africa not found a working solution to the problem, the mayhem that would have accompanied the disintegration of Kenya could have been seized upon by the anti-democracy fundamentalists in the Republican Party to opportunistically use Obama’s close Kenyan and African ancestral linkage to question his suitability to be President and commander-in-chief of the USA. What I am suggesting here is that his Africanness, blackness and his Islamic/Middle Eastern sounding family name “Hussein” that were used as scare tactics to voters, could have had the Kenyan turmoil as an added arsenal. Surprisingly, Africa did work out an African negotiated solution.
For Kenya, the rivaling political leaders learned some lessons from the violence that followed the attempt to manipulate the election results. In their self-interest, they quickly bought into the AU suggested solution of committing to putting in place remedial measures recommended by the African mediation mechanism led by the former General Secretary of the United Nations, Hon. Kofi Annan. These commitments resulted in the adoption of The Constitution of Kenya Amendment Act, 2008 (Act No. 3); Kenyan Parliament, 2008, The Truth and Reconciliation Act, 2008 (Act No. 6); Kenyan Parliament, National Accord and Reconciliation Act, 2008; the Waki Commission on the violence, 2008; and the Kriegler Commission inquiry into what may have gone wrong with the December 2007 elections, 2008). Instructively, the country adopted a law charting the way for the review of the constitution and, very importantly, a law on international crimes that complies with the Rome Statute of International criminal Court. This law enables the establishment of a special court to try those identified as having been most responsible for serious crimes in the wake of the crisis caused by the disputed results of presidential elections in December 2007; part of the strategy is to avoid possible invocation of the jurisdiction of the ICC. The NEPAD APRM process in Kenya had identified the electoral system, land and ethnic polarization as some of the key challenges the country needed to attend to urgently. It was therefore not surprising that all these were manifest in the inter-communal conflicts in early 2008.
The challenge to the Obama administration is whether and how far it will provide concrete support to the new constitution making process in Kenya. There is need and indeed high expectations that Obama will respond positively to this real challenge to the country to which he is indeed eligible to claim citizenship on account of parentage. Just as a reminder, a year before Obama’s birth, the renowned African-American legal luminary who was part of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka and later judge in the Supreme Court, Dr. Thurgood Marshall, participated as a special legal adviser to the African Constituency Elected Members delegation at the 1960 Lancaster House Kenya Constitutional Conference. The imperial government convened the conference to deliberate on Kenya’s constitutional development. The Conference’s deliberations were written into the Kenya (Constitution) (Amendment No.2) Order in Council, S. I. 2201 of 1960. It was followed by the constitutional conference of 1962 and the final conference of 1963 that led to the promulgation of the Independence Constitution.
The USA, the ICC, selective justice and the special case of the Sudan
The Obama administration was quick to act on the Guantanamo US torture base and kangaroo court-style military tribunal. One hopes that the other such centres littered in Europe and perhaps in some Arab countries will also be dismantled. Due process and the rule of law are too important to sacrifice. How far can/will Obama transform the fundamental thoughts, beliefs and fears of the military-industrial complex that is a significant part of the US “ruling class”? It is hard to guess.
The AU Constitutive Act of 2000 commits the continent to intervene in situations where serious crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are imminent or are taking place on the continent. Africa has therefore publicly expressed its commitment to participating in progressive development of international justice. For Africa one of the very immediate challenges with the emerging international criminal justice system is that of selectivity and double standards. For example, a country like the US that is not a State party to the Rome Statute of the ICC is allowed to sit in UN Security Council meetings that make decisions on referral of cases to the ICC. The case of Sudan’s President, Omar Al-Bashir, is a case in point. What the Trial Chamber and the Prosecutor will do has consequences that may worsen the crises in Dafur and put spanners in Sudanese North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Elections are due in the Sudan this year and the Southern self-determination referendum is due in 2011.
The Dafur region remains volatile. In my humble considered opinion, the perpetrators of serious crimes in Dafur, in the Middle East, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world must face justice and be held accountable, whoever they may be. However the timing requires serious consideration since the UN Security Council has the mandate to ask the ICC for postponement of arrest or trial according to Article 16 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998. While the world waits the decision of the Trial Chamber on whether to issue a warrant of arrest or delay such issuance of a warrant for Sudan’s President, it would be important for the Obama Administration to develop a coherent US policy and, if need be, to re-examine its position. The optimum prize would, of course, be the US ratification of the Rome Statute during Obama’s tenure in office.
The Monroe doctrine, the Americas and captivity of African Diaspora States and countries:
For black people anywhere in the world, Africans and peoples of African descent, Haiti occupies a unique historical position and meaning. Its revolution in 1804 had no parallel in history. Plantation slaves from Africa succeeded after 13 years of protracted armed struggle against the slave masters and the colonial authority, France, to free themselves by abolishing slavery; they went further to declare Haiti the first black republic in the world then dominated by European slavers, colonialists and imperialists. They defeated Napoleon despite his being assisted by Britain and Spain. Haiti had thus surpassed the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the subsequent constitution that effectively legalized slavery and slave trade until Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Declaration of January 1, 1863. Lincoln was the 16th President of the USA. C.L.R. James’ monumental work on the Haitian revolution, The Black Jacobins (1938 and 1980), demonstrates that spirit and determination for freedom and justice and commitment to struggle against all odds that Obama seems to have replicated at a different era and through different means in his quest to be President in a country in which the descendants of slavers and colonialists constitute a large majority.
From class and racial ideology of the ruling classes the heroic act of African slaves in Haiti and their achievement set a bad example. No wonder that since then the USA has been associated directly or indirectly with Haiti’s 33 coup d’etats, the more recent being the 2004 overthrow of the President Jean-Betrand Aristide.
The ousting of Aristide in February 2004 led to his and his family’s forced flight to Africa. The US forced him to board a plane that took him to a destination in central Africa. This met with disapproval from the African Union (AU) and CARICOM. The coup d’etat caused social and political turmoil in Haiti and attracted intervention by the United Nations. The UN Mission consisting of approximately 7 000 so-called peace keepers are still in Haiti. Elections were conducted on February 7 2006 in Haiti and on May 14, 2006 Mr Rene Preval was inaugurated as President. Mr Preval has subsequently established a Government. The new government was recently re-admitted into CARICOM. Early this year, the party of Aristide was excluded from taking part in local elections allegedly on the ground that Aristide was not in the country! President Aristide and his wife Mildred both work at my university as honorary research fellows. The fundamental question is whether the Obama administration will change US policy on Haiti.
But Haiti is not the only one. Southern American sub-continent, the so-called Latin America and the Caribbean, is home to an estimated 165 million people of African descent. If we exclude the obvious ones in the Caribbean such as Guyana, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago and others, the population mix in Latin American countries is as follows :
 Brazil: 185 million of which 90 million are black Afro-descendants;
 Colombia: 44.3 million of which 10 million are black Afro-descendants;
 Venezuela: 26 million of which 5 million are black Afro-descendants – this includes President Hugo Chavez who has proudly claimed his African heritage;
 Peru: 27 million of which 3 million are black Afro-descendants;
 Argentina: 40.3 million of which 2 million are black Afro-descendants;
 Ecuador: 13.7 million of which 500 000 are black Afro-descendants;
 Mexico: 108.7 million of which 300 000 are black Afro-descendants;
 Honduras: 7.6 million of which 200 000 are black Afro-descendants;
 Puerto Rico: 3.9 million of which 700 000 are black Afro-descendants;
 Nicaragua: 5.6 million of which 500 000 are black Afro-descendants;
 Costa Rica: 4.1 million of which 100 000 are black Afro-descendants;
 Panama: 3.2 million of which 500 000 are black Afro-descendants;
 Guatemala: 12.7 million of which 300 000 are black Afro-descendants; and
 Uruguay: 3.4 million of which 200 000 are black Afro-descendants;
The Bush policy was that of ‘you are with us or against us’; his administration attempted to coerce adoption of US trade and security policies that created a wave of anti-US sentiment in Latin America and the Caribbean. At election polls this translated into a defeat for the perceived (and actual) US supported candidates. The shift began 10 years ago with the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Today, left-leaning leaders, willing to pursue policies independent from Washington, govern in Argentina, Brazil and Chile – traditionally seen as the three most powerful and influential countries in Latin America. Elsewhere, the Sandanistas are back in power in Nicaragua; in Paraguay a former Catholic bishop known widely as the ‘bishop of the poor’ is now president; and the continent’s first indigenous person was elected president of Bolivia in 2006. The strength of this new leadership was displayed in the recent statement by the President of Ecuador who told the United States that if the US military wanted to renew its lease on military facilities in Ecuador, the government of Ecuador should be able to open a military base in Miami.
The strained relations between Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and the Bush administration was no secret. Yet Venezuela retains its position as the fourth largest exporter of oil to the USA, and the largest oil exporter in the Americas. Under the PetroCaribe agreement, Venezuela has been able to offer countries in the Caribbean attractive energy options that lessen these countries’ dependence on US aid. Cuba, in the meanwhile continues to respond to the crisis in health care throughout the Caribbean and Latin America by sending Cuban health professionals to countries in need and opening the doors of Cuban universities for the training of health care professionals. Haiti and Dominica are but two beneficiaries. The government of Dominica, reports that Cuba has given the country more scholarships and other assistance since 1978 than Dominica received during the entire colonial period of over 200 years.

This is precisely the kind of independence and south-south cooperation that has, in the past, been viewed as threatening to the US and has precipitated US intervention, coup d’etat, regime change and embargo repeatedly, throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Will the Obama administration craft a neighbour-friendly foreign policy that departs from the Monroe Doctrine that treats the Americas as its backyard? Will his administration end the embargo on Cuba?
Three years ago in 2006, my second daughter Priscilla Pambana Gutto-Basett – also with lineage to the Gusii and Luo of Kenya – who was fifteen years old at the time was among a group of US citizens formed themselves into the Venceremos Brigade. They were aged between the teens and the sixties. They mounted civil disobedience by travelling to Cuba. They were Chicano, Mexican, Puerto Rican, African American, Asian and white of European descent, many of them from working class families. As a parent I was apprehensive that the Bush underground machinery might do harm to them but overall I was proud of my little girl, the youngest in the team. She was reported in the media to have said: ‘I feel very strongly about the right to come here [in Cuba], because it’s such an amazing place …I think it is despicable that we call ourselves a democracy and have this blockade’.