Obama cautious of foreign adventures for US

03 Jun 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

The US finds its leadership in the world confronted by a sea of troubles, writes Tony Leon

A GREAT deal happens in just 24 hours in New York. Last Wednesday in the Big Apple, I participated in two such happenings and watched a third, each of them connected to the others and the wider world, illustrating both the height and the shrunken limits of what US President Barack Obama calls "American exceptionalism".

The morning began with a visit to the recently inaugurated National September 11 Museum, situated at "Ground Zero", where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.

That was until that fateful morning 13 years ago, when 3,000 people, from more than 60 countries, were immolated or leapt to their deaths when terrorist hijackers flew two planes into the edifices of the US headquarters of global capitalism and trade. As Thomas Friedman noted, thus began a war started by a "super-empowered angry man (Osama bin Laden)", who struck the homeland with deadly force, which led even the most hardened New Yorkers to regard the site of the attack as hallowed ground.

The museum itself is a monument to decorum. It contains more than 10,000 items collected from the carnage of that day. There is a roll call of the dead engraved around the two reflecting memorial pools on the precise site where the twin towers once proudly stood. The attack, of course, revealed just how vulnerable even the strongest nation is when confronted with an extremist ideology with no limits in its tactics or strategy.

Precisely how the US protects itself and its allies from the risk of future attacks and the metastasising of the global networks of terror that now afflict our own continent, from Nigeria to the Sahel, was the subject of another event that day in upstate New York.

Obama arrived at the military academy in West Point to deliver a "commencement address" (US-speak for graduation ceremony) for the cadets.

In reality, it was yet another attempt by the much-criticised commander-in-chief to reset and restate his foreign and military policy, which both left and right in this hyper-divided nation have pummelled for its indecisiveness and caution.

I thought he struck a note of realism when he told the graduating cadets — and, of course, the US’s many friends and enemies beyond West Point: "US military action cannot be the only — or even primary — component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail."

He then offered a blend of multilateral engagement, military action where vital interests are at stake, and a form of outsourcing the war on terror to countries at the coalface of it through a proposed $5bn fund for local training and resources. Perhaps the cash-strapped and resource-poor African Union will find this tempting, but some, in view of their anti-western bias, will be unwilling to take this proffered largesse.

The speech was, in fact, a thinly veiled repudiation of the legacy of former president George Bush, whose response to 9/11’s ineradicable stain on the US’s hitherto invincible psyche was to launch two invasions. As the thoughtful conservative columnist Christopher Caldwell noted: "Changing US foreign policy after George Bush is the main thing he was elected to do. He has done it."

But, at the same time, the US finds its leadership in the world confronted by, literally and metaphorically, a sea of troubles from Chinese aggression in the South China Sea to Russian revanchism in Ukraine, Iran going nuclear, and failed and warring states elsewhere in the Middle East. And uber-cautious Obama would rather err on the side of indecision than blunder into the wars without end launched by his predecessor.

He also operates with a shrunken budget and the smallest number of soldiers since before the Second World War, and a loss of appetite from his citizenry for further foreign engagements. The Pew Center polling group last year published a survey showing that, for the first time since 1964, a majority of Americans felt their country should "mind its own business internationally".

In fact, 1964 was the subject of a mesmerising play I saw the same evening — All the Way, starring the outstanding Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad TV fame (if you haven’t watched the series yet, you should).

In this production, he portrays in riveting detail president Lyndon B Johnson and shows, in the 50th anniversary year, how Johnson used an armoury of his extraordinary powers of personal persuasion and legislative mastery to push through the Civil Rights Act in the teeth of the fiercest resistance from his native South.

Of course, the play also alludes to the beginning of the US’s deepening involvement and commitments in Vietnam. And so the master of domestic politics was to witness his presidency implode in the paddy fields of Southeast Asia. Perhaps another reason for Obama’s caution in the world.

• Leon is the author of Opposite Mandela (Jonathan Ball) Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

‘Hinterland’ just the ticket in a leaderless world

15 Oct 2013 | Tony Leon  | Original Publication:  BDlive

Very few of the leaders on the global stage today have had much hinterland other than politics, writes Tony Leon

A LOCAL cynic noted the other day that while South Africa’s government functions for only about half the day, in recent weeks that is immeasurably better than watching the US government closed down for the whole day.

The capture of the US Republican Party by its take-no-prisoners Tea Party wing of true believers, who don’t believe as much in election results as they do in stripping President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms of funding, has provided an extraordinary spectacle. The old phrase, "crippled giant", has been given new meaning.

Not that the minority outliers in the House of Representatives should shoulder all blame. It has been a curious sight to watch the rhetorically impressive US president prove so feeble at what should be at the core of his job — doing the political business and forging the compromises to further his agenda.

The beetle-browed, 96-year-old British statesman Denis Healey had it right when he said every leader needed what he termed "hinterland". By this he meant being genuinely curious about the world around you and having a range of interests and a reach of ideas that draw on life outside your profession. This opens you to a world of inspiration to call on, which, far from crowding out your laser-like focus on your work, enhances it and inspires the decision-making process needed to enhance it.

Famously and balefully, Nelson Mandela fashioned much of his later political leadership from his prison experiences, enforced on him over 27 years. But it was also quite striking how often he referenced decision-making to experiences he gleaned in the unusual (in the sense it was the only black firm of its time) circumstances of the legal practice he established with Oliver Tambo in the 1950s. He certainly had hinterland.

Ronald Reagan built a hugely effective presidency because of his Hollywood background. This didn’t only allow him to become the "great communicator", but his clashes, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, with the powerful trade unions there gave him an essential idea about free markets to communicate as well.

Two of South Africa’s corporate leaders who grew family enterprises into global corporations were Harry Oppenheimer and Anton Rupert. They both had hinterlands in spades. Oppenheimer had spent a decade in opposition parliamentary politics and had a lifelong love of Africana. Rupert’s fascination with South African art and his love of his Karoo hinterland were not examples of corporate social responsibility — the concept had yet to be conceived and codified in his lifetime — but the consequence of real passion.

The contrast between those times and today’s leaders is quite striking. Very few of those on the global stage have had much hinterland other than politics. Obama was essentially a community organiser and a state legislator before serving two years in the Senate and running for the presidency. British Prime Minister David Cameron, born into affluence, aside from a brief spell in financial public relations, has spent his whole life in government and politics.

Locally, practically the entire Cabinet and the president have either spent a lifetime in politics or trade union work and have experienced little of the challenges of professional, nonpolitical activity. Of course the extraordinary circumstances of our history accounts for some of this — but not entirely. For example, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is admired across the cacophonous divisions of our polity. But aside from a lifetime in "the struggle", he had also practised as a pharmacist. And before his appointment to the Cabinet, his leadership of the South African Revenue Service provided him with knowledge of the intricacies and challenges of business and the corporate world, which went beyond the theoretical.

The emerging new leadership on the opposition side is cut from a similar, politics-only cloth and few of them could claim too much hinterland either.

But hinterland alone is not enough for successful and consequential leadership, which can change country destiny or corporate fortune. I was reminded of this when I participated in a debate the other night with AgangSA leader Mamphela Ramphele. She is charming, erudite and certainly has a greater hinterland of experience than any other recent leader in this or most other countries. The policy positions she elaborated were sensible. But I am not sure that she moved much of the capacity audience in Cape Town that night.

The additional missing ingredient is to explain the "why" and not just the "what" and the "how": a belief in something that inspires followers to believe in it themselves. There’s a brilliant TED lecture on the subject by Simon Sinek. It lasts about 10 minutes and is free to download on YouTube. It provides more insights than most I have heard from an army of expensive management consultants and political strategists. Take a view.

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

As in the UK, ‘nostalgia ain’t what it used to be’

08 Oct 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Something that centres on a vanquished leader appears to be happening on the local election front that calls to mind humorist Peter de Vries’s words: ‘Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,’ writes Tony Leon

AT THE risk of incurring the displeasure of the proprietor of this newspaper, who — probably correctly — believes most readers are oversaturated with politics, permit an observation on next year’s elections. It starts with a nugget gleaned during a visit to London. There, a good friend who has spent decades representing the Conservative Party in parliament pointed out that the Tories took more than 20 years to recover from their brutal political assassination of their most successful modern leader, Margaret Thatcher.

The Conservative Party, which enjoys the distinction of being the most electorally successful political machine in the 20th-century democratic world, was in its own terms quite right to get rid of Thatcher in November 1990. Despite having won three general elections for her party and recast the mould of her country’s political economy, by then she had saddled her party with more negatives than positives. These included an unpopular policy (the poll tax), an increasingly divisive and imperious leadership style, which she viewed without end ("I plan to go on and on," she said), and a take-no-prisoners approach to any dissidents (whom she dismissed as "wets" or "spineless").

Her successor, John Major, stepped in and won an improbable fourth term of office for his party. But that was the high point of a premiership that pretty quickly unravelled.

But as the humorist Peter de Vries noted: "Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be." At last week’s Tory conference, Thatcher, in the form of a video titled Our Maggie, was portrayed in heroic terms to stir the party faithful. Something similar appears to be happening on the local election front, also centred on a vanquished leader.

In December 2007, when Thabo Mbeki was dumped as president of the African National Congress (ANC) and then, 10 months later, "recalled" as state president, an ANC colleague in Parliament made an interesting observation: "Just watch what happens. The genie is now out of the bottle and leading this party and country will never be the same again."

 Reflecting back on those twin acts of ANC regicide, it is quite striking how a party, which hitherto had been almost blinded by leader-worship, could act so decisively when vital interests were threatened. Like Thatcher, not an obvious comparison, Mbeki had delivered two major electoral victories (greater than achieved by Nelson Mandela) and had stared down some powerful interests to impose a degree of market-friendliness in some, crucially though not all, areas of economic policy. His eloquent "I am an African" speech was perhaps the defining moment in the country’s constitutional process.

But there was even more red ink on the negative side of his leadership ledger than on the scorecard of the "Iron Lady". Imperious leadership, pumping up racial division and an African Renaissance that morphed into trysts with tyrants come to mind. His HIV/AIDS policy, which cost hundreds and thousands of unnecessary lives, originated from an intellect detached from reality. But merited or not, his removal from office remains a defining feature of our politics.

What a difference five years makes, though. The Mbeki years are now remembered through the lens of the troubled present far more warmly than could have been imagined. The ANC in Gauteng desires his presence in its campaign; and even though this has been slapped down from above, it is noteworthy that when he voted in the 2009 election, Mbeki famously refused to comment on-camera on whether he was even voting for the ANC. Doubtless the fact that his key lieutenants had formed a rival party, the Congress of the People, also on the ballot that day, weighed on his comment.

But the rediscovery of ANC leaders past is not confined to the ruling party. Hot on the heels of lashing the colours of the Democratic Alliance to the mast of Mandela, its Gauteng premier candidate, Mmusi Maimane, this week, more surprisingly, also joined the Mbeki revival club. Maimane is a highly personable and charismatic man whose origins are in the church. But he is also very politically ecumenical. His slogan "Believe in Gauteng" is borrowed, with local adaptation, from Mitt Romney, while his rhetoric is much inspired by Barack Obama. But this flexibility was extended last week when he announced that he had been an ANC-aligned Mbeki supporter and that his presidency instilled in him a sense of pride and that its high point was the policy of black economic empowerment.

Doubtless in order to score an immediate point against Mbeki’s successor, he chose to elide straight past the red ink in the past president’s ledger. But by casting politics in terms of a narrative — "the previous president was good, this one is bad" — suggests that the difference between the two largest parties in the country is a disagreement on the leadership choices of the ANC. Perhaps that was not the intention. But, then again, motive is less relevant than result.

 

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

Heed the message of Obama’s ‘universal bridge’

02 Jul 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

We should heed Obama’s message of the 'universal bridge' in the run-up to next year’s elections, writes Tony Leon

NOSTALGIA without memory is a common malady," warns David Remnick, whose biography of US President Barack Obama, The Bridge, is certainly one of the most thoughtful books that the rise to power of the 44th US president has inspired. The biography derives its title from the remark of US civil rights veteran and congressman John Lewis that "Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma" — a reference to one of the fiercest crucibles of the struggle for racial equality and voting rights in segregationist Alabama, back in January 1965.

Fast-forward to Sunday and Obama in a masterful address at the University of Cape Town (UCT), which combined nostalgia and memory coupled with hopeful and warning shots on Africa’s future, reminded his audience that the bridge to his keynote address on his 36-hour whirlwind tour of South Africa was first constructed by slain US senator Bobby Kennedy.

From the same podium, 47 years ago, Kennedy — speaking when the dark night of apartheid seemed without end and the US civil rights struggle was still in its infancy — inspired his audience and the world with his soaring rhetoric about the hopefulness of individual agency in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Obama quoted from that famous speech: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

My own bridge to memory, not nostalgia, of presidential visits past was constructed of more modest, but unforgettable, material. I recalled standing for more than two hours outside the presidential guesthouse in Pretoria in July 2003 in order to attend a luncheon in honour of then president George Bush. Other than the burdensome and endless security hoops guests were obliged to jump through, I remember little of the detail of the event, except for Bush’s rather curious description of then president Thabo Mbeki as his "point man" on Zimbabwe. A decade later and a new "point man" in Pretoria notwithstanding, the tyrant across the Limpopo remains enthroned; although as Obama reminded his audience, he is now hemmed in by a new constitution and, he did not add, by the ravages of time.

But my memory of queuing in the cold allowed me to pass on the kind invitation from the US consulate in Cape Town to attend the UCT shindig in person and this time, wiser and older, to watch it on TV from the comfort of home. Doubtless I denied myself engagement with a suitably enthralled crowd of the local good and the great. But it did allow the indulgence of channel-surfing while the audience awaited the speech. This provided a study in contrasts: at more or less the precise moment Obama entered the auditorium on the southern tip of Africa, tens of thousands of angry Egyptians were milling on the continent’s northern end in Tahrir Square, Cairo. They were demanding the resignation of the president. Mohamed Mursi, whom they had elected in hopeful and peaceful circumstances just one year ago, now in a remarkably short spell in office, seems to have offended just about every constituency in his vast nation, except for his shadowy band of true believers in the Muslim Brotherhood. The economy is flat on its back, the state is bankrupt, the army remains privileged and the opposition, fractured as it is, is excluded from the governing consensus. But it was, in fact, in Cairo in June 2009, also at a famous African university, Al Azhar, that Obama made another consequential speech. This was about 18 months before the "Arab Spring" lit the fires of resistance against tottering authoritarian rulers in North Africa and beyond. That speech offered his famous balance of hope and change for reset relations between the West and Muslims.

But it also came coupled with a less-remembered warning about democracy: "There are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others…. Government of the people by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party."

That’s the universal bridge that spans the divide between Africa, north and south, and all countries in between. We should heed its message in the run-up to next year’s elections here at home, and what comes afterwards.

 

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

 

Can Obama Hear South Africa's Cheers?

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

 

 

US outspokenness is a virtue worth importing

06 Nov 2012 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive

The US might be in gradual decline on several fronts, but its political contests remain in the financial stratosphere, writes Tony Leon

DURING the 2008 US presidential election, Barack Obama frequently invoked the observation of 40 years earlier by Martin Luther King, on whose shoulders his campaign stood, that "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice".

Four years ago today, I was resident in Washington DC, where we celebrated election night 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 TV, it seemed less like political spectator sport and rather more like a shimmering event of historical redemption. Fortified by the obligatory takeaway 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 significance of the fact that the next occupant of the White House was part East African and that he would soon inhabit a residence built two centuries before by slaves of West African origin who, in the words of David Remnick, "had no last names or carried the names of their masters". 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.

Tonight’s result is likely to be much closer and certainly less historic than 2008, assuming that Obama, as polls suggest, does indeed nose ahead of his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. The Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll released last week shows that, barring a last-minute surge, Obama is going to fall well shy of the 52.9% he won in the 2008 election. It might still be good enough to win, but it won’t be resounding.

The key defection among previous Obama supporters has been across the board among white voters. But although whites still constitute three quarters of the electorate, Obama has maintained his narrow lead by his high retention rate of black and Latino voters, the latter being the fastest growing group in the country.

But the standout feature of today’s US election is that it is the most expensive in the history of the planet. The US might be in gradual decline on several fronts, but its political contests remain in the financial stratosphere, and today’s exercise cost about $2bn for the rival presidential candidates and an overall $5bn for the entire cycle, including the primaries and congressional races.

Race-holding or reversion among voters was perhaps to be expected, especially in hard financial times, although even the most jaded South African would have been offended by the T-shirt worn at a Romney rally in the all-important state of Ohio, which proclaimed: "Put the White Back in the White House."

But the deep animosity, often verging on hatred, Obama inspires in the far less crude and doubtless less racist enclave of the US, big business, is one of the more surprising features of this contest.

Chrystia Freeland noted in a recent New Yorker article that Obama has served the rich "quite well".

His administration supported a $700bn bail-out of Wall Street and resisted the siren calls from the left (such as Nobel prize winners Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz) to nationalise the banks. At the end of September, the stock exchange rebounded to just a few percentages below its prefinancial-crisis high. And Obama is hardly the first Democrat to inflict slightly higher taxes and more oversight of the group we now dub "the 1%". Franklin Roosevelt, the patrician and immensely wealthy president during and after the Great Depression, was dubbed a "traitor to his class".

But the invective and dollars that have been hurled by the super-elite against Obama have been astounding. One of the US’s richest men, hedge fund founder Leon Cooperman, drew a parallel between Obama’s election and the rise of the Third Reich. Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman compared Obama’s effort to eliminate tax preferences for private equity firms to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. In the pantheon of the mega rich, Warren Buffett stands virtually alone in holding that no millionaire should pay less than 30% of his income in taxes.

Of course all this sounds very quaint, if not somewhat amazing, to the hard-pressed business sector here at home.

They would love to pay the high-end taxes Obama proposes and doubtless wished they could sound off, in doubtless more decorous terms, like their US counterparts have railed against their president. For every boardroom exile such as Russell Loubser who speaks out, dozens retain their seats at the table, nod in silent agreement and keep their heads down and hope for the best. For all its costs and imperfections, the confidence to speak out remains an American virtue we should consider importing.

• Follow Leon on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA

Old-style oppression has new adversaries

Josef Stalin cynically said: “A single death is a tragedy — a million deaths is a statistic.” He prosecuted his tyranny, replete with mass murder, according to this formula.
There is some accuracy in the tyrant’s observation. Perhaps that is why one 12-year-old boy, Hector Pieterson, is the iconic embodiment of the June 16 uprising against apartheid. Although hundreds of lives were lost when the riots spread into intractable national unrest, Sam Nzima’s photograph of the shot boy being carried by his sister and a fellow student was the freeze-frame that catapulted this event into the consciousness of the world.
Two Saturdays ago in Tehran, a 26-year-old woman was shot dead by an Iranian government militiaman. The video clip of music student Neda Agha-Soltan’s dying moments captured on a cellphone was bounced across the globe by satellite and through new media such as YouTube, stamping her instantly as a symbol of the anti-government protests.
The Iranian opposition proclaimed her as a martyr for freedom in a society that, as Nazila Fathi noted in the New York Times, “is infused with the culture of martyrdom”.
Two days after her death, there were already 6860 entries for her on the Persian-language Google search engine. Perhaps the potency of the new media is revealed by the fact that Mirhossein Mousavi, the main opposition candidate in the disputed, probably rigged, presidential election in Iran, has used social network Facebook to mobilise his supporters. Twitter is another new tool of communication against the theocrats in Tehran, who base their authority on a religious tradition that is more than 13 centuries old.
The incompatibility between old-style repression and newfangled media is only one of many contradictions that the tumultuous events in Iran have highlighted.
Another is the fault line which the poll, and the protests against its outcome, revealed between the two plates of the Iranian revolution — one theocratic and the other democratic.
Most power in Iran is wielded by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and various religious bodies such as the Guardian Council.
Lesser authority lies in the hands of the democratic parliament and the popularly elected president.
Under the rule of populist conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there was little to separate the outlook and approach of the two branches of the Iranian revolution. But reformist challenger Mousavi became a lightning conductor for the young and disaffected, especially marginalised women, who have spearheaded the protests in the firm belief that massive fraud prevented their candidate from winning.
The signs of splits and fissures, even within the previously united religious leadership, are clear, although the direction in which the 30-year old Iranian revolution will head is not. There has been a stirring of a moderate revival elsewhere in this most combustible arena of geopolitics, in Lebanon and in next-door Iraq, for example.
But, of course, the issue in Iran — and one with huge consequences for this troubled neighbourhood — is its nuclear potential.
Although Ayatollah Khamenei has the final word on nuclear and security matters, both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, and most Iranians, apparently see the development of nuclear power as a totem of their sovereign independence. However, there is obviously a difference in approach between the president, who threatens to “remove Israel from the map of history” and announces that Iran has successfully tested a new solid-fuel missile with a range of 1900km, and a challenger who denounces his opponent’s “foreign policy adventurism”.
This then brings in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Before the Iranian election, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, in an authoritative article, stated that Netanyahu’s actions are “shaped by a profound conviction that Israel will be in danger of extermination if Iran has nuclear weapons at its disposal”.
It also quoted a recent interview, which the prime minister gave to an American journal under the headline Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran or I Will.
Influential Middle East watchers in the US have suggested that Netanyahu far prefers to face the anti-Semitic Ahmadinejad, who has suggested the Holocaust was a hoax, as president than his rival.
As one of them expressed it: “Israelis believe he reflects the true and immutable character of the Iranian regime. If a moderate were to take over, it would not herald any real change in Iran or its nuclear ambitions, but simply disguise it better.”
The repression of the pro-democracy demonstrations on the streets of Tehran suggests that Netanyahu will be granted his wish in the choice of his opponent. After all, bullets are more powerful, in the short term at least, than Twitter. But, over time, the ineradicable human craving for freedom is more difficult to suppress.
We can only guess how much time will lapse between the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan and the arrival of the freedom she now symbolises.

*Published Sunday Times 6 July 2009

State religion does not have all the answers to jobs crisis

OUR state religion appears to be the worship of the state. Heaven knows, to sustain the analogy, there now appear to be no shortage of new and unlikely adherents to this belief. Barack Obama’s administration is now effectively the controlling shareholder of General Motors and Gordon Brown’s government owns 70% of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The deep global recession has created some unlikely converts from unfettered market capitalism to more state directed economic leadership.
But, back home in SA, as I surveyed the jobs massacre contained in the figures for the first quarter released this week, which show that 179000 jobs were lost and that the “distressed labour market” could yet shed another 200000 jobs before year-end, it occurred to me that what we need now is a healthy dose of local agnosticism in order to innovate and create new work. In other words, less ideology and more realism.
Last Friday, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel appeared to make an important concession: he said that government’s policy of promoting “decent work” would not exclude “the creation of temporary, low-paid jobs in the short term”. He made the further concession that the 500000 jobs to be created under the expanded public works programme “would not, in themselves, be proper, permanent, well-paid jobs”, but they could create a bridge into the labour market.
This dose of realism seemed to be in line with the candour of Trevor Manuel , who in his previous incarnation as finance minister said, after presenting his last budget in Parliament, that the problem with “decent work” in a time of crisis was that “all jobs are hard to come by, and the more adjectives you add, the harder they will be”. Or, as the old adage expressed it, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited at all.
Whether these statements represent shafts of light or a false dawn on the gloomy debate around job creation is difficult to assess. This becomes even more apparent when the assault launched by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on labour brokers and the casualisation of work is taken into account. Last month, he told the congress of the National Union of Mineworkers , “the reality is labour broking is a form of human trafficking. These companies sell the labour of workers to the highest bidder and then pay them the lowest wage ... it allows workers to be traded for profit just as if they were meat and vegetables.”
When I visited the headquarters of the largest private employment agency in SA, Adcorp , this week, I expected after the minister’s pronouncement to find a Dickensian pit of human misery. Instead, the ultramodern office block in Bryanston houses a go-ahead company where I had an interesting discussion with the splendidly named Loane Sharp, who serves as the company’s labour market analyst.
He made the point that the much-maligned labour brokers represent a R23bn industry, which since 2000 has introduced about 3,5- million temporary, part-time and contract employees into the labour force, approximately 2- million of whom are first-time jobseekers, 92% of whom are African, and 85% of whom are aged 18-35. Of even more significance was his analysis that a third of these employees secured traditional permanent jobs within a year and 47% did so within three years.
In other words, far from being reprehensible and “human traffickers”, the brokers are, in fact, SA’s principal entry point into the labour market for unemployed African youth.
Sharp’s analysis runs counter to the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu’s) blunt instrument: they are calling for a ban on labour broking, which could lead to the loss of, perhaps, a million jobs. The labour minister is advocating the quasi or de facto nationalisation of private employment agencies. But the agenda behind this agenda is, simply, that the bulk of these temporary or casual workers are nonunionised. They, therefore, compound Cosatu’s crisis of relevance and its shrinking membership and revenue base.
Another voice, which deserves to be heard is the estimably sensible one provided by Ann Bernstein and the Centre for Development and Enterprise/Business Leadership SA’s “5- million jobs initiative”. They offer a welter of practical initiatives to resolve the exquisite Catch 22 in which the vast pool of young, unskilled jobseekers find themselves. As Bernstein put it: “They can’t get a job because they have no work experience and they can’t get work experience because they can’t get a job”.
The most persuasive statistic the centre provides to bolster this assertion is the fact that more than 70% of 15-30 year olds who want a job have never been able to find one.
To quote the vanquished Thabo Mbeki , the crisis on the job front calls for a “business unusual” approach. And that means that adherents to the old gospel of the state religion need to listen to a few agnostic voices.

*Published 26 June 2009 in Business Day

Lesson to be learnt is that humility trumps hubris

Last week provided a study in contrasts between the use and exercise of power, at home and abroad.
In President Jacob Zuma’s rural redoubt of Nkandla, it was easy to be blind-sided by reports of black economic empowerment bling, relating to the helicopters and flashy cars that transported the ascendant elite to the head of state’s home village thanksgiving.
But Zuma’s speech was not aimed at the ostentatious. It suggested a sense of someone, who, whatever his past and future failings, remains absolutely rooted and secure in his identity and mindful of the communal ladders which lifted him to prominence.
Zuma assured his audience: “I will never forget my origins ... even as president, I will not change. I will still listen to you and do whatever you tell me to do ... Even if I live in a big house. You will tell me if I do wrong.”
Nkandla, in other words, will provide Zuma with the moral compass for his presidency.
My wife, Michal, who practises as an executive coach, drew my attention to a vast range of literature which differentiates between “external” or “hard” power and emotional intelligence, conveyed by “internal” or “soft” power. Most political leaders follow the first route, believing that the externalities of power, detached from emotion, are the ticket to leadership.
Yet, the more effective form of leadership often originates from your internal power: your own sense of identity based on the strength derived from your personal relationships and your ability to recognise, and manage, your emotions — and to empathise with others.
That’s a pretty tall order. But someone else whose soft power was on conspicuous display last week, in the cauldron of the Middle East, was US President Barack Obama. His masterful speech at Cairo University resulted in a standing ovation — no mean feat given that his immediate predecessor, George W Bush, on his last visit to the Middle East, had a pair of shoes thrown at him.
In place of the Bush rhetoric, made vivid with the formula “you’re either for us or with the terrorists”, Obama managed to draw on his own multicultural background, and his middle name “Hussein”, to navigate through the multiple minefields of Middle East politics.
The usually staid Financial Times exalted Obama for reaffirming his country’s “unbreakable” bond with Israel and for recognising the “intolerable” plight of the Palestinians. Obama “dodged the ambushes, without evading the issues”.
But it was another paragraph in the superpower leader’s speech, which caught my attention. He reached back to the words of President Thomas Jefferson: “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”
Of course, as one critic noted, the eloquence of action is more powerful than the eloquence of rhetoric. But the speech did provide a refreshing start to what is hopefully a new chapter in US-Middle East relations.
However, across the oceans, in London, Gordon Brown’s premiership appeared to be in a political death spiral.
Last weekend, as Zuma celebrated and Obama basked in his warm Egyptian reception, Brown faced up to the loss of six senior cabinet colleagues, and the slump of the governing Labour Party to third place in the European elections.
Compounding Brown’s misfortunes was the leaking, last weekend, of e-mails penned 18 months ago by the past master of the dark arts of political intrigue, Lord Peter Mandelson. In the hasty reshuffle of the cabinet, he effectively became Brown’s deputy prime minister.
Yet, when marooned behind the front line of British politics, Mandelson had cast doubts on his leader’s mental hygiene, describing him as “insecure”, “complex”, “self-conscious” and “angry”.
In Mandelson’s view, Brown “tries too hard to be a normal person”. But perhaps Brown is onto something.
Former British politician, and one-time neurological registrar, David Owen, has diagnosed a condition to which too many political leaders are prone.
In a recent book The Hubris of Power, he suggests — drawing on his observations of Bush and Blair, and framing them around the invasion of Iraq — that something happens to the mental stability of some leaders while in power.
He suggests that hubristic behaviour is an occupational hazard of high office. Exacerbated by isolation and deference, it can lead to patterns of reckless behaviour, bad judgment calls and a tendency to see the world as an arena in which the leader can exercise power, based on “a delusional sense of personal infallibility and divine exemption from political accountability.”
Let’s hope, for our sake (and the world’s), that Zuma and Obama remain grounded.
They could do worse than to follow, with the necessary updates, the Roman example.
Wise emperors apparently placed a slave behind them on their chariots. His purpose was to whisper: “Remember, you are only human.”

*Published in Sunday Times 14 June 2009

The Power of Addiction and The Addiction to Power

The scandals are flying so thick and fast around here that it is all a little reminiscent of the final act of Macbeth. The corpses have piled up so high and the murders so widespread, that you eventually loose count of the number and the motives behind each assassination. All you are left with is the primal force of the destruction: addiction to power.

On the political front, the arrest of Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich for allegedly trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder is currently centre-stage. The FBI affidavit underlying the criminal complaint against Blagojevich, whose state motto is “The Land of Lincoln” (an American avatar of political honesty and ethical probity), revealed wiretaps of conversations where Blagojevich and his associates schemed up various illegal ways in which he could profit from his authority to appoint Obama’s successor. In Chicago, which long-time resident Saul Bellow once indicted as a city representing “the overlap between politics and crime” this is known as “pay to play”. I actually thought that the seat-buying which characterised South Africa’s recently-euthanised floor-crossing was an extreme feature of our corroded culture. It appears, however, to have international application. The Illinois Governor is currently suspended in a sort of political-zombie zone – he remains in office but everyone from the President-elect to his own Lieutenant- Governor have called for his removal and he is now subject to impeachment petitions in the state legislature. But what differentiates the mop-haired Governor of easy virtue is that he hasn’t yet claimed that his “innocence until proven guilty” is a sufficient political defence to stave off the clamour for his departure. He is also likely to be hounded from office and certainly will not become the president of his country. In South Africa, of course, this basic right of the criminal defendant has become the political weapon-of-choice for the politically mighty, including our wannabe President, whose criminal charges are far more serious than those facing the sleazy US Governor.

The loss of faith in a local political personality here is nothing compared to the incredulity which has greeted the self-confessed mega-fraud of Wall Street titan Bernard L. Madoff. If it is possible to tarnish capitalism’s high street brand even further, then the 70 year-old with the once-Midas touch has done it. In what might be the largest financial swindle in history, he stands accused of orchestrating a $50-billion “Ponzi” con, on the good old pyramid scheme concept in which early investors are paid off with money from later investors, until no more money can be raised, and the scheme collapses.

In South Africa we would associate such a charming device (indeed, as Michael Lewis recently wrote, “something for nothing - it never loses its charm”) with a Nigerian criminal scam or with the founders of the ill-gotten 1980s Kubus get-rich-quick plot. However, Madoff’s alleged pyramid scheme was far broader than anything dreamed up by a Nigerian or South Africa crook. He drew in prominent billionaires, European banks and major American philanthropies, and he did so largely on the basis of the trust which his swanky Manhattan address, his Palm Beach Country Club membership and huge charitable giving engendered. His reliability was so great, that he was referred to, with affection, as the Jewish Treasury Bill. Madoff’s exposure is symptomatic of a much wider malaise, and one which goes far beyond personal embezzlement and corporate culpability. It is only slightly worse than the “legal scheme” which caused the wider collapse of America’s financial architecture, and many of Wall Street’s most famous houses.

Writing in the New York Times this week, Thomas L. Friedman pinpointed the parallel between Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and Wall Street’s “cheap credit, low standards and high greed.” On the one hand, you have Madoff cooking the books and providing consistently high returns regardless of market conditions. On the other hand, subprime lenders gave a worker who made just over $1000 a month a “nothing down and nothing-to-pay for two years” mortgage to buy a $750 000 home. They then bundled that mortgage with hundreds of others into bonds – which Moody’s or Standard and Poor rated AAA and sold them to banks and pension funds all over the world. A veritable pyramid scheme -writ hideously large.

But, of course, the link between the greedy Illinois Governor, the scheming Wall Street traders and the universal band of corrupt political brothers, appears to be addiction of one form or another – either to power, or greed or some combination. Just like Shakespeare gave forth Macbeth, Southern Africa’s local neighbourhood tyrant, Robert Mugabe, continues with his policies of national destruction. And South Africa, like a powerful yet indulgent relative, continues to coddle him from international sanction.

Last week I discussed Mugabe’s behaviour with my Durban boyhood friend, Jeremy Schmahmann. He now lives in Boston and has risen to great heights as Professor of Neurology at Harvard University Medical School. He has an interesting hypothesis, not yet proven, but one which has big implications for dealing with both national tyrants, and even the more common and garden financial fraudsters. It boils down to transposing “the tyranny of addiction” to the addiction to tyranny. As Jeremy put it the other night, society acknowledges “the tyranny of addiction” – the craving for drugs, alcohol or gambling that grabs hold of a person’s body and soul. Neurobiologists now have a fairly detailed understanding of the hard-wiring and chemistry of the brain that leads to this personal disintegration. With Mugabe, who cannot relinquish power even in the midst of a mass cholera epidemic symptomatic of the country he has now so comprehensively broken, “his brain reward system is in over-drive, addicted to power.” And like any addict, he cannot just be persuaded to stop. He needs to be removed from the addicting substance, and from the environment which supports it. Since our local politicians’ lack of political imagination and courage has led to consistently misdiagnosing Mugabe and his cravings, perhaps they should take a page from this eminent neurologist.

We are surprised and saddened when the oppression of Ian Smith metastasises into the brutality of Robert Mugabe. We are equally amazed that the frauds of Enron and WorldCom are repeated again in the form of Madoff. But, of course, they stem from the same impulses, and the same lack of internal or external correctives. The first step to healing, both the economic and political systems, is to recognise the addictions and to apply the corrective measures early on.

This being the last Washington column in the last Weekender edition of the year, allow me, with a touch of American ecumenicalism, to wish all readers “Happy Holidays”.

*Written for "The Weekender" in South Africa; publshing date: Saturday, 20 December 2008.

The New Secretary of State

Washington’s worst-kept secret was made official on Monday. President-elect Barack Obama announced – from Chicago, that his one-time deadly rival, Senator Hillary Clinton would be the next US Secretary of State. The furious flurry of chatter and swirl of speculation which preceded the announcement gave way, after momentary pause, to a renewed flurry and swirl: was this a master-stroke of inclusivity? A case of inspanning of a “team of rivals” to borrow the title of a much-touted new book on the cabinet of Obama’s distinguished predecessor, Abraham Lincoln. Coincidentally, he also hailed from Illinois and like Obama, was a little-known Senator until his presidency, and the American Civil War which defined it, marked him out as an all-time great.
Or would the apparent enmity and distrust between Obama and Clinton, and the unfulfilled presidential ambitions of “Madam Secretary-elect” as we must now call her, doom the relationship?
The betting, at the moment, inclines to the masterstroke explanation. But the media immediately noted the apparent incongruity of this pick of the ultimate Washington insider by the man who promised to be the tribune of change. The simultaneous announcement of former NATO Commander and Marine Corps Commandant, General James L Jones, as Obama’s Security Adviser and his retention of President Bush’s Defence Secretary, the Republican Robert M Gates, means the untested President-Elect has surrounded himself with “two Cold War warriors” plus Clinton, all of whose records are far more hawkish than the liberal, change-oriented Obama.
Obama batted away the apparent contradiction (and his record of campaign disagreements with Clinton) by advising, “I’m a strong believer in strong debate and strong opinions”. Indeed to most, the selection signalled a president who is self-confident enough to surround himself with smart and capable people: a study in contrast to the incumbent Bush, whose moral certitude and the blind faith of his key advisers landed America (and the world) in many of its current travails.
Although Obama mocked Clinton during the campaign for a foreign policy resume obtained by osmosis through her presidential husband while First Lady, and chastised her judgement as a Senator for supporting Bush to go to war in Iraq, foreign opinion apparently reacted with optimism to her selection. In some circles this was not because of her record: during the primaries she warned that Iran risked “obliteration” in the event of nuclear attack in Israel – and also dismissed as “reckless and naive” her new boss’s plan to engage in talks with the dread Iranian leadership. She announced herself in favour of “coercive diplomacy” – whatever that might mean or entail.
But the global welcome to her appointment is attributable in part to her star power: “she’s a global brand”, gushed the New York Times. Even its waspish columnist, Maureen Dowd – a well-chronicled Hillary-hater – who had previously warned Obama not to pick Clinton as Vice President. (“She’ll put poison in your tea”, she wrote back in August) recanted. Last week she approvingly quoted another Clinton critic who concluded “she’s smart and tough and a lot better than any of those old hacks like Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright.”
However, I think the real clue to the apparent American and world receptivity to Clinton’s new incarnation probably lies in the acronym “ABBC” (“Anything Is Better Than Bush and Co”). A senior Russian MP was quoted this week as saying, “the most important thing is not who is coming in, but who is leaving.”
But Hillary Clinton, star wattage and stellar intellect aside, is weighed down with a lot of baggage. I was advised at a recent dinner by a veteran of her husband’s administration that “most of it is carried by Bill”. My informant was scathing on the excesses of the soon-to-return Clinton soap opera: the paranoia, the infidelities, the leaks, the volcanic tantrums. All of this seemed ill suited to the discipline and thoughtfulness of the “No Drama Obama” regime. Globalisation guru and veteran foreign policy watcher, Thomas Friedman opined that if the relationship between the president and his secretary of state sours or becomes remote (as it became between the much-admired Colin Powell and President George W Bush) then “foreign leaders will spot the daylight between them from a thousand miles”. And here the “big dog”, as Bill Clinton has been dubbed by some, enters the frame. He practically has his own foreign policy apparatus: his global philanthropy foundation employs 800 people. He earns R100 million in speaking fees annually, many of which are apparently thinly-disguised influence-peddling events sponsored by doubtful foreign potentates. He also has 200 000 (actual number) donors to his presidential library whose identity have never been publicly disclosed. But at the time of Hillary Clinton’s nomination, it was mentioned that he received a $10 million gift from the Saudi Royal family.
No doubt the new administration will resolve these conflicts of interest. But a conflict of interest of a different sort potentially looms between the new administration in Washington and the next government in Pretoria. This is the hangover from Thabo Mbeki’s penchant for temporising with African tyrants. If this pattern persists going forward then the Union Buildings can expect a serious early collision with another appointee announced here on Monday. Susan Rice, a close Obama confidante has now been elevated, with cabinet status, to the US ambassadorship at the United Nations. In contrast to Mbeki’s shielding of the Sudanese dictator and oppressor Omar al-Bashir from indictment by the International Criminal Court, Rice is a vehement and committed adherent to using “America’s muscle to protect human rights in Africa.” When Jacob Zuma recently visited Washington I suggested to him that we should change course away from the Mbeki approach of “never meeting a dictator he didn’t like”. I hardly expect our wannabe president to accept my unsolicited counsel .But as South Africa’s rights-delinquent term of office on the Security Council is about to expire, Pretoria might have consideration for the fact that many key people in the new administration in Washington consider our performance there to be more befitting of a “rogue democracy”.

* Written for the Weekender, to be published 6 December 2008.

Obama: The hope, the contradiction

There are days that define a country’s history and which signal a sea-change in its national course. 27 April 1994 was such a date for South Africa, when against expectation and history; we turned our back on three-and-a-half centuries of racial division and political exclusion. 1 May 1997, less dramatically, marked a profound shift in British political history, as nearly two decades of unbroken Conservative rule were swept away in a tidal wave of change in favour of Tony Blair’s Labour Party.

Tuesday, November 4 2008, proved to be, at so many levels and in many different ways, a hinge day of change for America. Ironically, it was the rallying cry which the vanquished Republican standard bearer, Senator John McCain used in his frenetic and futile dash across seven states on the last day of the campaign, which accurately summed up the epoch-changing result of the US presidential election: “We never hide from history! We make history!”

As the results rolled in on Tuesday night, and were relayed with a degree of technological wizardry and television mastery which made me gape, America made history, but, from the Republican perspective, for all the wrong reasons.

On the back of a surging turnout, buoyed by the worst financial crisis this country (and the world) has seen since the Great Depression, Barack Hussein Obama was elected President with a huge Electoral College sweep of 338 votes to 163 and a slightly narrower, but equally decisive, popular vote haul of 51% of the ballots cast.

The most obvious and commented upon aspect of the remarkable achievement of the 47 year-old first-term Senator is his racial identity. As the New York Times exulted “he swept away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease”. For the candidate, now president-elect, it was a moment to savour. As he told over 200,000 of his supporters gathered on the balmy Fall evening in Grand Park in Chicago, “I was never the likeliest candidate for this office”.

Perhaps it was appropriate that it was the state of Virginia, which swung behind Obama and voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in 44 years, which assured Obama of his win. In many ways, the state of Virginia, known as the “Old Dominion“ symbolised the struggle for slavery and on its battlefields, the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War were fought. This was a true moment of American exceptionalism, which seemed, as the ballots piled up and the results were declared, to sweep away the ugly stain of a racially disfigured past and which in the words of one commentator witnessed, “tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim”. Obama’s improbable, but emphatic, election is certainly at odds with some comfortable and conspiratorial assumptions made about the United States. Steven Kull of the BBC recently reported on an international conference he attended in Malaysia where some of the delegates assumed that the US was controlled by “a cabal of white bankers and Jews who use police and fire hoses to repress blacks”. Obama’s rise will trigger “severe cognitive dissonance” amongst America’s detractors abroad for whom the excesses of the Bush presidency provided easy ammunition.

Cynics argue that it was only a-once-in-a-century economic crisis which got enough white people in America to vote for a black man. But this actually misses the wider point: Obama was a transformational candidate in many, perhaps less obvious, ways. When his quest for the presidency seemed somewhat vain and Senator Hillary Clinton was a prohibitive favourite to win the Democratic nomination, I happened to attend a rally he addressed just over a year ago in the urban parkland of the Boston Common. I thought the crowd was impressive, but the 10000 people he drew that night, was in the course of the long campaign which followed to be eclipsed typically by hundreds of thousands who flocked to hear a candidate whose campaign propelled him into the iconic status, and gave him the pulling power, usually reserved for rock stars. Although his crowds increased, his message never wavered: that night in Boston he never spoke about race, or his suffering, or his people’s struggle for equality. He addressed the future and offered hope for the resolution of the myriad conflicts in America’s national life and international projection. By turning his back on the sort of race-holding politics which has characterised the debate about transformation in South Africa, and which Jesse Jackson has preached unwaveringly in America, Obama got Americans to see beyond skin colour.

American voters in Tuesday did not simply turn a new page for a country whose racial history and current antagonisms are perhaps as severe as, or even exceed, those of South Africa. They also took a huge leap of faith. Half of the voters who cast their ballots told exit pollsters that they did not believe Obama had the experience to be an effective president, as opposed to 6 out of 10 that said that Senator McCain did. But an overwhelming 90% said that the economy was in bad shape and seven out of 10 voters disapproved of the job which President Bush has done. Thus the election of Obama, whose opponent was 72 years-old and a veteran law-maker and prisoner-of-war hero into the bargain, marked the end of a generational era as well. The public clamour for change, spurred by young voters who cast ballots in record numbers and older voters who are fearful as they watch 40% of their retirement savings being obliterated by the Wall Street blow out, proved decisive.

Taking a timeline of the polls, you can trace Obama’s victory and McCain’s defeat back to the third week of September, the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, a harbinger of the financial crisis to come. On that pivotal day, it is now clear, that the election would become, in large measure, a referendum on the economy. Campaigning in Jacksonville, Florida McCain made the fateful, and politically fatal, remark, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”. Up until then the polls were even and his controversial pick of culture warrior Governor Sarah Palin had enthused the Republican base. But the financial fires of Wall Street which fanned across America and which saw, for example, General Motors announce (just the day before the election) its worst month of sales since the Second World War , sealed the deal. It says much for the discipline, the brilliance and the awesome financial power of the Obama campaign that it could exploit and magnify every misstep of its opponent and minimise the contradictions contained within its own ranks and hidden behind its message of “hope”: a candidate offering change and a new direction, anchored to liberal policies which looked decidedly antique given the enormity of the unchartered territory the American and world economy has now entered.

But America’s embrace of its most liberal president in two generations and the end it heralds to laissez-faire Reaganomics does not change another fundamental. This most adaptive of all nations remains 40% “moderate”, 40% “conservative” and only 20% “liberal” according to the polls. Obama is a shrewd enough politician to know that he will have to govern, as he campaigned, from the centre of the political spectrum.

Obama’s in-tray is overcrowded. He has promised to end an unpopular war in Iraq, and win a necessary one in Afghanistan; he has promised universal health care and to find alternatives to America’s crippling dependence on Middle East oil. He has to do all this against the background of record budget deficits and a looming crisis in America’s Social Security programmes which will soon be bankrupt. He has to divine a manner of satisfying the resurgent big government spenders in his own Party, whose ranks have now increased in both Houses of Congress who wish to spend a trillion-plus dollars to avoid a deep recession. But he has also promised tax cuts to 95% of the population. Former Democratic Party grandee, Mario Cuomo once archly observed, “You campaign in poetry, and you govern in prose”.

However, Obama’s historic victory suggests that he has exceptional and disciplined talents to meet the challenges of extraordinary times and to balance, if not resolve, the contradictions he both epitomises and has already overcome.

*Published in The Star Newspaper, Johannesburg, 10 Nov. 2008