---

---

Kenya: Lessons Local Politicians Can Learn From Obama Victory

Cabral Pinto

7 November 2008

---

opinion

Nairobi — A non-white has become the American president for the first time. You may call Barack Obama black, African-American, Kenyan-American or simply American. In electing him, Americans have given content to their vision of US citizenry.

The US had given the impression that the top political leadership is the preserve of its white male citizens. This has been proved untrue, and it is only a matter of time before America elects a woman president.

This victory is likely to be accompanied by many commentaries, perspectives, challenges and threats, but for Kenyans who believe in transformation politics, alternatives and new leadership, there are lessons to be learnt.

One of the positive results of Kenya's post-election violence is the birth of a social movement of transformation leadership that is committed to economic, social, cultural, spiritual and political change.

It comprises progressive Kenyans committed to fundamental reforms. Fortunately for the movement, current politicians are so arrogant that they believe the country has to accept them as eternal leaders. This arrogance is manifested in the manner leaders have dismissed the Waki report.

At the Bomas constitution review talks, the politicians fought hard to torpedo the provision for the recall of MPs who cease to represent their constituents' interests.

What lessons can the social movement learn from the Obama victory? If a social movement calls for change it has to articulate it properly. The movement must go beyond, for instance, the ODM rhetoric of fundamental change versus the status quo.

Kenyans must be convinced they have vested interest in the change being proposed. They are not moved by just promises; they wish also to know the challenges as well as what may, or may not, be done, and if they may be involved.

The Obama campaign articulated the change middle-class and ordinary Americans would see as possible and worth voting for. In particular, it dealt with economic issues that transcend race and other divisive issues.

The movement has to come up with a message of change that cannot be shot down on ethnic, racial, regional, religious, gender or generational grounds.

The Obama victory has shown the wisdom of investing in the youth's energy, creativity, volunteerism and the quest for change. In the Kenyan case, we are talking about a social group that makes up over 60 per cent of the population. Indeed, 89 per cent of Kenyans are under 30, the social group whose interests the current crop of politicians know nothing about.

The only time they think of them is when they wish to recruit them into illegal militias, shock troops and as pimps and mistresses. The movement must give concrete hope to the youth for it to have a chance of success.

The Obama triumph confirms that elections can be won without relying on resources from the rich. Kenyan politicians are arrogant because of their resources, including violence machinery.

The US president-elect has shown that the people can fund-raise for a cause they believe in. Obama can perhaps rightly claim to be the American people's representative. They paid for his campaign and supported as well as volunteered for his call for change.

It is important for the movement to realise that Kenya has a precedent of what has happened in the US. Kenya's independence struggle was funded by ordinary Kenyans -- right from Mzee Jomo Kenyatta's campaigns in the UK and those of the first elected members of the then Legislative Council (LegCo) as well as care for detained freedom fighters' material needs.

The Obama victory shows that change can occur within the mainstream political parties. He worked and mobilised within the Democratic party. It may be remembered that the Narc reformers had the same dream of vanguishing politicians from within the party structures.

But the experiment failed miserably. Why did the reformers sell out to the conservative forces in the party? Only Prof Yash Pal Ghai, Mr John Githongo and Mr Maina Kiai survived.

The Obama victory proves that party structures are important, and the movement must bear this in mind.

The movement should learn about Obama's emergence as a political leader in many of the projects he was involved in. Leaders emerge in movements if such organisations give priority to the struggle for their leadership.

Kenya has a precedent in this; Kenyatta's track record made him the undisputable leader of the independence struggle. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga became the undisputable leader of the masses because he was able to articulate opposition to the Kanu dictatorship consistently and courageously.

Thus, as they celebrate the Obama victory, Kenyans should realise that he now presides over a great empire premised on the vision that America is the world and the world is America.

Read comments. Write your own.

---