I think this one's worth re-visiting today. Originally published in the East African (and posted on my Facebook). Read and enjoy.
There was a bittersweet sense of defiant jubilation when Barack Obama was finally declared President-elect of the United States. The elation pouring out of every corner of Kenya (and most of the world) was genuine and heartfelt, and the tears were of joy and awe as we knew we witnessed a soaring moment of history. What tempered the emotion was the awareness, fairly close to the surface, that we were enjoying this at a certain remove. Obama is an inspiration, and his victory a deeply affecting one, but he’s not our President – our claims on him are slightly hollow, and the true beneficiaries of the revolution (and its true authors) are people who live ten thousand miles from here.
Yet there is something in that hunger. The expressions of hope and elation signify a yearning for something – for an Obama we can call our own, without the compromise of celebrating a foreign leader. These expressions took shape in different ways. Those of us who think ourselves as more sophisticated debated the Obama presidency in air-conditioned halls and television studios, our gravitas cautioning Africans against unseemly celebration and unwarranted hopes. Intellectual sobriety was supposed to triumph over atavistic longings. Those who weren’t buying such balderdash went ahead and let it all out. Young people in Kisumu, who could not wait for Americans to cast their ballots, went ahead and conducted an election of their own, in what will remain one of the enduring images of the Obama miracle (and to make it even more surreal, there were people who actually ‘voted’ for John McCain, and those ‘votes’ were duly counted).
The hunger, then, is deep seated. We yearn for our own Obama, given the fact that the one we could have had is the one we let slip away. But dig deeper into this longing – take it apart – and the questions become less simple, in a way that is less easy to answer. When we seem to be seeking our own Obama, what exactly are we looking for?
Is it Obama the embodiment of the ‘yes we can’ philosophy (a notion as fuzzy or as concrete as you want to make it)? Triumph of bootstraps over adversity? Soaring rhetoric over muddy reality? Kenyans, like any other people, are willing to be deflowered with sweet words sweetly said. Which perhaps explained our fondness a few years ago for Michael Wamalwa, a politician as vacuous as any other, but one able, if only for a while, to seduce with a well-turned phrase. The cold light of morning, however, tends to reveal the depth of eloquence (or lack thereof). Seduction when you’re clear-eyed is much harder to pull off, and only succeeds when you can back it up. So, for Obama, the next four years will reveal the reality behind his rhetoric. The suspicion is that he, to a large extent, will be able to fulfill his promise (something about the content of his character implies that he is a man whom challenging times will hone to greatness). That is the obverse of it. The reverse, then, is that we’re probably still stuck looking for the Great Seducer. There was perhaps a template in Mukhisa Kituyi – a singer of songs to propel us to ecstatic voting and then the smarts to wow the WTO crowd. But hey, he’s out of power, and the pretenders to that throne, like Ababu Namwamba, are slightly too inane to stand in that gap (fawning magazine covers notwithstanding).
What else is it, then? Obama the flower of youth? Claimants to that mantle are myriad. Some are callow and untested (the aforementioned Mr. Namwamba and Danson Mungatana come to mind), some are considered sinister (such as William Ruto) and some are still trying on the broken mould of Uhuru Kenyatta. Youth is a much-sought after commodity in Kenyan politics, and for reasons that are rather unclear. True, geezers tend to have little energy for much beyond legislative mischief (getting the media fraternity all in a tizzy about the stroke of a pen, instead of letting them enjoy the first peaceful New Year’s in a while). What the matter seems to be is that our history books tend to read like newspapers or blogs, with the same cast of characters (or at least characters bearing the same surname) making appearances, uttering the exact same lines that were a hit decades ago. They seem not to follow instructions too well (‘exit, stage left’ seems to be only for a change in party costume, and not a hint that we need an entirely new cast of characters). Kenyan politics is a good Catholic marriage – death seems to be the only way of pulling us apart. So the sight of doddering, drooling old men reliving the days of the Emergency makes us long for a young, handsome Obama to take us away from this. Yet we forget that Obama’s youth is relative. His fiftieth birthday is a mere two summers away, and he has been plugging away at politics for almost twenty years. The campaign was a distillation of all the lessons learned from politics at university, local and state level, and finally national contests (and his youthful sexiness is the distillation of the paradox of eight cigarettes a day and unrelenting workouts at the gym). Our young ones jump straight into the national pond, and we seem to let them revel in it. Which perhaps speaks to the shallowness of our national politics – that midgets stand so tall in it.
Something else may lie in a clue given to me by a friend who claims to have his finger on the pulse of Luo politics. He claims that by ethnicity – his surname is Olwa; and by residence – he lives in the heartland of Kisumu – he knows what’s going on in Luo Nyanza, and he has quite a radical thesis. He claims that the biggest loser in Obama’s victory– besides poor old clueless John McCain – is Raila Odinga. According to some of his supposed conversations with old Luo men – the oft-frustrating search for a ‘ruoth’ has found its culmination on the faraway shores of Lake Michigan. Jaramogi and his son made a good go of it, but the ultimate stench of failure means that their bid was not a successful one. What Judge Kriegler said – that we will never know whether the ultimate shortcoming was the result of fraud or benign neglect – is irrelevant. What matters is that the younger Odinga is not President, and Obama is, so the young and impressionable will go with the certified winner. Certainly an arguable concept, but one with legs. And those of us with no Luo blood (or those of us who snootily make fun of this yearning for a champion) still sneak in a tenuous affiliation with Barack when the convenience strikes. Even when we disdain and dismiss any forced connection, we do so in the manner of fake academics – citing shallow knowledge of Obama’s ancestry and the workings of American foreign policy to prove our wise detachment.
Finally, is our search for Obama a yearning for a cleaner politics? The sludge that is Kenyan politics seems to thicken by the day. If it is not the avarice of our parliamentarians, it is the grudging realisation that our leadership at the presidential level has been an advertisement for tyranny of different flavours – Kenyatta was a senile tyrant, Moi an undereducated tyrant and Kibaki is proving to be an uninterested tyrant. We look ten thousand miles away hoping that the coming morning will be an endless November 5th – a tableau of hope and history and joyous tears. Yet even November 5th in America gives way to December 9th. Yes, even Americans have venal and tawdry politicians who see public office as a route to quick and illegal wealth (cue Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor who got arrested a month after Obama’s victory for trying to auction his Senate seat). Many American politicians would fit right into our scene, and our MPs would enjoy the American way of corruption (and be just as highly paid). Maybe the desire then, is less for political purity and more for the feeling that hope is not a cheaply-peddled commodity. Sincere revolutionaries like Obama can make it to the top, and unfortunate idiots like Blagojevich will have the full force of the law descend on them, and the future may be unadulteratedly brighter (once you get economic crises and Middle Eastern politics out of the way).
While we make up our minds about what incarnation of Barack the Legend we seek, we will satisfy ourselves with the half loaf that is an ersatz Kenyan, in his guise as the most powerful man in the world.
There was a bittersweet sense of defiant jubilation when Barack Obama was finally declared President-elect of the United States. The elation pouring out of every corner of Kenya (and most of the world) was genuine and heartfelt, and the tears were of joy and awe as we knew we witnessed a soaring moment of history. What tempered the emotion was the awareness, fairly close to the surface, that we were enjoying this at a certain remove. Obama is an inspiration, and his victory a deeply affecting one, but he’s not our President – our claims on him are slightly hollow, and the true beneficiaries of the revolution (and its true authors) are people who live ten thousand miles from here.
Yet there is something in that hunger. The expressions of hope and elation signify a yearning for something – for an Obama we can call our own, without the compromise of celebrating a foreign leader. These expressions took shape in different ways. Those of us who think ourselves as more sophisticated debated the Obama presidency in air-conditioned halls and television studios, our gravitas cautioning Africans against unseemly celebration and unwarranted hopes. Intellectual sobriety was supposed to triumph over atavistic longings. Those who weren’t buying such balderdash went ahead and let it all out. Young people in Kisumu, who could not wait for Americans to cast their ballots, went ahead and conducted an election of their own, in what will remain one of the enduring images of the Obama miracle (and to make it even more surreal, there were people who actually ‘voted’ for John McCain, and those ‘votes’ were duly counted).
The hunger, then, is deep seated. We yearn for our own Obama, given the fact that the one we could have had is the one we let slip away. But dig deeper into this longing – take it apart – and the questions become less simple, in a way that is less easy to answer. When we seem to be seeking our own Obama, what exactly are we looking for?
Is it Obama the embodiment of the ‘yes we can’ philosophy (a notion as fuzzy or as concrete as you want to make it)? Triumph of bootstraps over adversity? Soaring rhetoric over muddy reality? Kenyans, like any other people, are willing to be deflowered with sweet words sweetly said. Which perhaps explained our fondness a few years ago for Michael Wamalwa, a politician as vacuous as any other, but one able, if only for a while, to seduce with a well-turned phrase. The cold light of morning, however, tends to reveal the depth of eloquence (or lack thereof). Seduction when you’re clear-eyed is much harder to pull off, and only succeeds when you can back it up. So, for Obama, the next four years will reveal the reality behind his rhetoric. The suspicion is that he, to a large extent, will be able to fulfill his promise (something about the content of his character implies that he is a man whom challenging times will hone to greatness). That is the obverse of it. The reverse, then, is that we’re probably still stuck looking for the Great Seducer. There was perhaps a template in Mukhisa Kituyi – a singer of songs to propel us to ecstatic voting and then the smarts to wow the WTO crowd. But hey, he’s out of power, and the pretenders to that throne, like Ababu Namwamba, are slightly too inane to stand in that gap (fawning magazine covers notwithstanding).
What else is it, then? Obama the flower of youth? Claimants to that mantle are myriad. Some are callow and untested (the aforementioned Mr. Namwamba and Danson Mungatana come to mind), some are considered sinister (such as William Ruto) and some are still trying on the broken mould of Uhuru Kenyatta. Youth is a much-sought after commodity in Kenyan politics, and for reasons that are rather unclear. True, geezers tend to have little energy for much beyond legislative mischief (getting the media fraternity all in a tizzy about the stroke of a pen, instead of letting them enjoy the first peaceful New Year’s in a while). What the matter seems to be is that our history books tend to read like newspapers or blogs, with the same cast of characters (or at least characters bearing the same surname) making appearances, uttering the exact same lines that were a hit decades ago. They seem not to follow instructions too well (‘exit, stage left’ seems to be only for a change in party costume, and not a hint that we need an entirely new cast of characters). Kenyan politics is a good Catholic marriage – death seems to be the only way of pulling us apart. So the sight of doddering, drooling old men reliving the days of the Emergency makes us long for a young, handsome Obama to take us away from this. Yet we forget that Obama’s youth is relative. His fiftieth birthday is a mere two summers away, and he has been plugging away at politics for almost twenty years. The campaign was a distillation of all the lessons learned from politics at university, local and state level, and finally national contests (and his youthful sexiness is the distillation of the paradox of eight cigarettes a day and unrelenting workouts at the gym). Our young ones jump straight into the national pond, and we seem to let them revel in it. Which perhaps speaks to the shallowness of our national politics – that midgets stand so tall in it.
Something else may lie in a clue given to me by a friend who claims to have his finger on the pulse of Luo politics. He claims that by ethnicity – his surname is Olwa; and by residence – he lives in the heartland of Kisumu – he knows what’s going on in Luo Nyanza, and he has quite a radical thesis. He claims that the biggest loser in Obama’s victory– besides poor old clueless John McCain – is Raila Odinga. According to some of his supposed conversations with old Luo men – the oft-frustrating search for a ‘ruoth’ has found its culmination on the faraway shores of Lake Michigan. Jaramogi and his son made a good go of it, but the ultimate stench of failure means that their bid was not a successful one. What Judge Kriegler said – that we will never know whether the ultimate shortcoming was the result of fraud or benign neglect – is irrelevant. What matters is that the younger Odinga is not President, and Obama is, so the young and impressionable will go with the certified winner. Certainly an arguable concept, but one with legs. And those of us with no Luo blood (or those of us who snootily make fun of this yearning for a champion) still sneak in a tenuous affiliation with Barack when the convenience strikes. Even when we disdain and dismiss any forced connection, we do so in the manner of fake academics – citing shallow knowledge of Obama’s ancestry and the workings of American foreign policy to prove our wise detachment.
Finally, is our search for Obama a yearning for a cleaner politics? The sludge that is Kenyan politics seems to thicken by the day. If it is not the avarice of our parliamentarians, it is the grudging realisation that our leadership at the presidential level has been an advertisement for tyranny of different flavours – Kenyatta was a senile tyrant, Moi an undereducated tyrant and Kibaki is proving to be an uninterested tyrant. We look ten thousand miles away hoping that the coming morning will be an endless November 5th – a tableau of hope and history and joyous tears. Yet even November 5th in America gives way to December 9th. Yes, even Americans have venal and tawdry politicians who see public office as a route to quick and illegal wealth (cue Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor who got arrested a month after Obama’s victory for trying to auction his Senate seat). Many American politicians would fit right into our scene, and our MPs would enjoy the American way of corruption (and be just as highly paid). Maybe the desire then, is less for political purity and more for the feeling that hope is not a cheaply-peddled commodity. Sincere revolutionaries like Obama can make it to the top, and unfortunate idiots like Blagojevich will have the full force of the law descend on them, and the future may be unadulteratedly brighter (once you get economic crises and Middle Eastern politics out of the way).
While we make up our minds about what incarnation of Barack the Legend we seek, we will satisfy ourselves with the half loaf that is an ersatz Kenyan, in his guise as the most powerful man in the world.
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