Rasna Warah
12 July 2009
opinion
Nairobi — MANY KENYANS ARE disappointed that "our son", President Barack Obama, did not choose to come "home" on his first official trip to Africa.
The general feeling is that Obama is "punishing" the Kenya Government for its slow pace of reforms and its unwillingness to deal with corruption.
Although I believe that shunning Kenya is part of the Obama administration's strategy for dealing with poorly governed African states, I am convinced that Obama, unlike his predecessor, George Bush, has deeply personal reasons for avoiding Kenya.
Every trip Obama has made to his ancestral land has been both a revelation and a disappointment. As a young man in search of his roots in the 1980s, he saw a country ravaged by a despotic regime, and a people without faith in a better tomorrow. He saw siblings, cousins and aunts, whose lives showed little promise, and who envied him for not being born in Kenya.
When his wife Michelle joined him on a honeymoon trip to Kenya, she was equally disappointed. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama recounts Michelle's experience of her father-in-law's land:
"Michelle was bursting with excitement about the idea of visiting the continent of her ancestors, and we had a wonderful time, visiting my grandmother up-country, wandering through the streets of Nairobi, camping in the Serengeti, fishing off the island of Lamu.
"But during our travels, Michelle also heard -- as I had heard during my first trip to Africa -- the terrible sense on the part of most Kenyans that their fates were not their own. My cousins told her how difficult it was to find a job or to start their own business without paying bribes. Activists told us about being jailed for expressing their opposition to government policies.
"Even within my own family, Michelle saw how suffocating the demands of family ties and tribal loyalties could be, with distant cousins constantly asking for favours, uncles and aunts showing up unannounced."
When he came back to Kenya as a US senator in 2006, the government pooh-poohed him for being just a "junior senator from America" who had no right to lecture Kenyans on issues such as corruption and the rule of law. Is it any wonder he is avoiding Kenya now?
Barack and Michelle Obama's experience of Kenya as a nation of hopeless beggars, I believe, has also impacted his own views on foreign aid to Africa.
OBAMA HAS BEEN CRITICISED FOR not doing enough for Africa -- at least not as much as his predecessor George Bush, who committed nearly $50 billion to reducing HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.
Even though Obama has committed to doubling aid to Africa, he is more inclined than Bush to see aid as a temporary solution to a problem that needs to be solved institutionally and through better governance.
I am also inclined to believe that Obama's personal experience of the "dependency culture" in Kenya, typified by his own family, has made him wary of the value of foreign aid. The fact is that he never really enjoyed an equal relationship with most of his family members; most viewed him as the foreigner who could help them escape poverty.
As Sunday Nation columnist Sunny Bindra has pointed out in the anthology, Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits, "relationships between givers and takers are always fraught with difficulty".
He explains: "At some stage in our lives, many of us (especially those of us who live in Africa) have had to support disadvantaged friends and relatives. Where that exchange involves reasonable sums provided to overcome temporary difficulty, both sides are happy... It all goes horribly and predictably wrong, however, if the dependency continues indefinitely.
"Once the kind-hearted, socially responsible one has been doling out large sums for many years and the needy, dependant one has been pocketing them, the recriminations begin. Far from being productive or necessary, the donor-dependant relationship most often ends in mutual hatred."
Obama is seeking a departure from the "business as usual" donor-recipient relationship, particularly with regards to Africa, because he knows how this relationship has distorted his own relationship with his ancestral land. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he could visit a Kenya that is strong, thriving and bursting with optimism, rather than one that is on its knees begging for assistance?
If that day ever comes, we will be happy to partner with him as an equal, not as part of an aid-driven system that is designed to perpetuate dependency.
Obama can then proudly lay claim on Kenya, just like we now lay claim on him, because that will be the moment he will stop seeing his ties to Kenya as an unfortunate accident of history.
Ms Warah is an editor with the UN. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.
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It is callled do something for yourself. It takes someone that does do anything to critcize someone else. Barack Obama's kenyan dad did nothing but abandon him, so he did not get anything from Kenya, if he did, he would have never been President of the US. Africans through out the contienent let Western countries as well as China rape you, just like the tribal leaders. What are you talking about. I think you are bitter and hopeless. It is a shame when you know there is no way out.
kwells43 ------ Are you serious? “ I think you are bitter and hopeless.” ----- Little you know about me. You should look at yourself first. Tell us what you do before you unload personal attack on others. You are accusing me of being bitter. Bitter about what? For whom? Hopeless?! Did you see me at your house front porch? Did you see me begging? Attack my argument if you wish. But calling me names does not make you an expert on the issue. Nor does it make you a smart individual. If asking the author of the article to dig deeper into the myth behind “donor-recipient” relationship hurts your feelings, than I perfectly happy with it. Just cower in your corner conscience and wine.
“Africans through out the contienent let Western countries as well as China rape you, just like the tribal leaders.” ------ This statement proves my point. Do you even understand the message in my observation? Do you even know what it means by the word “welfare”? What does foreign aid means to you? Based on your drivel comments you do not deserve an answer from me. It is a waste of time to debate people of your caliber
Perfect knockout.
Visit the Zimbabwe discussion site, and you'll find abundant and nauseating evidence of the rhetorical malady you so poignantly exposed.
This mouthpiece of liberalism in INVADERLANDS in Africa is not concerned about substantive debates on African issues, because it is in BED with the liberal wing of the political landscape in INVADERLANDS.
Anyway, what is the point of debating the obvious: that this entity is a TAIL of INVADERDOM in Africa.
On the substantive issue, Africans should refuse all aid or, as you correctly named it, "welfare" from INVADERDOM, which owes Africans, according to the Russian President, trillions upon trillions of USD for its pre-colonial and colonial pillage of Africa.
Now, you can see with your own eyes the rubbish spouted by Obama in Ghana the other day.
He inanely asked Africans to forget about the pre-colonial and colonial pillage of Africa's resources and peoples (and his wife is a legacy of that pillage). And, the bourgeois Ghanain parliamentarians clapped. Fools.
Moreover, he blamed the woes of Africa on lack of "good governance." The liar. The lack of "good governance" is a factor, and only a factor in the TROUBLES OF AFRICA. He, this Obama, this Chicago politico turned President of the USA, DELIBERATELY conflated a part with the whole.
Good governance my foot: how about some "good governance" at Wall Street Casino; at the State Department, which refused to call the obvious US sponsored coup in Honduras "a coup," and so on indefinitum?
Consequently, this Obama thing, as most denizens in the US are only now belatedly discovering, is much ado about nothing. Same old Bushist policy, wrapped in the snake oil rhetoric of African-American civil rightists, the rhetoric of equality beyond the political zone, an impossibility in the classical theory of Liberalism. And, it needs to be emphasized that "democracy" is only ONE component of the doctrine of LIBERALISM.
When you forget that, then you paste "democracy" on your forehead, and you declare yourself John Locke or Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, even though the named characters would not conflate democracy with LIBERTY and THE EFFICIENT DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC RESOURCES.
INVADERDOM has denied Africa all three moments of LIBERALISM.
Fine, maybe it is time that African youth try to implement a different GRAND NARRATIVE.
Fine too, will be the destruction of the heirs of the fathers of 'independence',
richerson88 ----- “Africans should refuse all aid”. You are the man I would prefer to spend time learning from! I salute you sir! Where at do we find these kinds of discussions? Give me a hint. I want to join.
A “grand narrative” is long overdue. I could not agree more! The tragedy is such that this is the only forum out there to talk about the issue with a different way of looking at it in the African Diasporas. Those who have access to the media are just complacent. They are looking for a salary. The very website we are using is a fraud in itself. It does not frame the issues for the interest of African development. As a result, we get stuck with mind teasers articles like the one I responded to. I am under no illusion about Obama. I did not talk about him in my observation. Much of it was implied in the grand scheme of things. His era is a perfect juncture to expose so many cloaks which blind the majority of many Africans.
The criticism you level at his rhetoric is well known, at least among my friends. Some of us have a much harsher criticism. There is no such a thing as “free lunch” in a capitalistic society. And yet, the West dishes out this “free lunch” mind teaser model and shoves it in our throats. What elected him in the first place was the notion that America was now sane enough to promote development around the world. Bush was his implied campaign manager. He owes him a lot of gratitude or at least a thank you postcard. Obama is the new sheriff in town to advance the cause of African people. His job is to represent or speak for financial institutions in order to exploit or rob with impunity in the form of American interest or aid to third world countries and good governance.
“What is the point of debating the obvious”? You are being too kind and giving many people on this website more credit than they deserve. Remember, these are African intellectuals. They are leaders posing as prostitutes between the west and the African masses that you are talking about. Many of them cannot see the obvious because their conscience has been defeated. Others don’t want to think beyond their own noses. Far more disturbing are those who have a self-imposed ignorance. They refuse to see the obvious. That is, in my view, the dismal picture we are up against. The question is: where do we go from here? Can we find a forum, which encourages discussions you and I are talking about? What would compel people like “kwells43” to think a little harder?
Ghana told more lies, they portrayed stability. Why didn't you?
Welfare is never a design to set one free. “$50 billion to reducing HIV, malaria and tuberculosis” will not set Africans free from playing a subservient role. It is just crocodile tears from a person who is desperate for a legacy he could not muster and finds it convenient to go to third world countries looking for sympathy and making people to shut up about his misguided policies. It is a capitalistic tool to keep one subservient and a perpetual beggar. Until the politics behind the so-called “aid” is dealt with, there will be no tangible hope for Africans. You are telling us something conscientious Africans already know. To take you seriously, please chew on “donor-recipient relationship” a little more.