07 Nov 2012 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: HuffingtonPost
I guess, judging by the
social media chatter, radio call-ins and other background noise in Johannesburg
today, that most South Africans awoke (we are six hours behind EST) with
pleasure to the news of Barack Obama's sweeping, if hard-fought, re-election
last night.
There are a number of
sentiments behind this acclamation: simply as the most expensive (by a huge
margin) electoral contest in the planet and the saturation coverage it received
on the satellite tv stations broadcast here, this presidential election was
always going to attract a big local following.
Next, there is the issue
of identity: although Obama only paid one fleeting visit to South Africa, as a
junior U.S. Senator, the stand out fact is, of course that he is half East
African and occupies a White House (on which his lease has just been extended
for four more years) built, as David Remnick noted in his influential work The Bridge, by ''West
African slaves who had no last names or carried the names of their
masters." Identity, especially racial identity and shared struggle and
oppression, matters in this corner of the world and on this continent. And even
if Africa barely featured in the campaign, if at all, there is an affirmation
of pride and solidarity in the result, a reaffirmation of the history-breaking
election of four years ago.
Then, there is the fact
that, despite some thin accomplishments on the foreign policy front at least in
Africa, as with the rest of the world there were few local votes for Mitt
Romney, whose projection as a predatory private equity super-capitalist,
however distorted, hardly matched the mould from which Obama was cast . The
1%-ers have not too many followers in this country, which has one of the
highest rates of inequality in the world.
Of course all this
viewing of the American election through the local lens can be distorting and
misleading. To transpose Al Gore, there is at least one big ''inconvenient
truth." And it actually concerns the man who beat Gore in the even more
dramatic and disputed election of 2000, George W. Bush. Undoubtedly history and
American voters and the world will remember "43" for the several big
things he got wrong. But actually, unheralded and often unremembered, he was
probably and ironically (given the provincialism in which he shrouded himself
and his forays into the Middle East) the most consequential president for
Africa: His Prepfar AIDS initiatives put huge resources (more than $15bn)
behind the provision and roll out of antiretrovirals, and saved millions of
lives. His unflinching support for Congress's AGOA pro-Africa unilateral trade
access has been a game changer for African employment creation and
sustainability. In tiny neighbouring Lesotho, some 40,000 textile workers have
sustainable jobs due to this policy.
So much for the past.
Although I cannot forget that four years ago last night I was actually living
in Washington, D.C. and working as a visiting fellow at a think tank. On
election night in 2008, we celebrated with a party in the attic of our
brownstone rental, for a group of visiting South Africans and a few locals.
Watching the drama unfold
on the TV screen, it seemed less like political spectator sport, and rather
more like a shimmering event of historical redemption. Fortified with the
obligatory take-away pizzas and beers, we were all glued to the TV at that
around-midnight moment when Obama passed the magic number of 270 electoral
votes needed to clinch the presidency and the networks proclaimed him the
winner.
I turned away, almost
choking on the historic significance of the fact that the next occupant of the
White House had an African provenance. I noticed that there were few dry eyes
in our TV den as we observed the conjoining of a moment of American
exceptionalism with a reminder of its more shameful past.
Last night's result was a
little closer and more grinding in its achievement, and with racial voting
patterns which would not be unknown in South Africa, except for the reversal of
the ratio of black and white and the absence of Latinos here. Still, the hope
might be a little faded and frayed in America and the world this time round.
But the expectation that a new mandate will lead to its fulfilment still burns
pretty bight in this part of the globe.
• Follow Tony Leon on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA
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