The 44th President of the USA!

ByTazoacha Asonganyi in Yaounde.

There has been euphoria all over the world following the landslide victory of Barack Obama to become the 44th President of the USA.

Africans across the board have been urging their sit-tight leaders to take note of the free and transparent electoral process that brought about such heart-warming renewal in the USA, and especially the frequency of change at the presidency.

From another perspective, some people see the victory as a sort of cleansing of the scars of slavery and colonialism that helped to build the West, but stand starkly as the main accused for the backwardness of Africa.
Indeed, many major sins were committed by the West on their road to development, including Slavery, Colonialism and the Holocaust.

The feelings of the Jews have since been assuaged by retribution and the founding of the state of Israel. So far Africa has had only empty apologies for the sin committed against it, until now that Obama has emerged to be totted like the ultimate reason why we should forgive and forget slavery and colonialism, since with the scars, an African or Africa can still be the best if the required effort is made.

Whether this is true or false, we cannot resist the lead Obama provided by his loaded campaign slogan: Yes, we can! Before reaching that conclusion, he first reached a similar conclusion about himself: Yes, I can!
He reached this conclusion after finding answers to some questions that kept haunting him like: What is our community and how might that be truly reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations to the community reach? Who really am I?

To the questions about the community, he immersed himself in community work in Chicago. As for the questions about himself, apart from the knowledge he gained in the black community in Chicago during the community work, he went to Kenya to dig into his roots.

In Kenya, his grandmother told him that Obama "sired" Hussein Oyango, Oyango sired Barack and Barack sired him, Barack Hussein Obama.

She told him about the confusion and blurring of vision of his father and grandfather following their various encounters with the colonialists.

He was also told that when his father got interested in the struggle for independence, his grandfather used to tell his father that an African cannot defeat the white man when he cannot even make his own bicycle; that the African only wanted to work with his family or his clan while all white men work to increase their power; that the white man alone is like an ant that can easily be crushed, but they work together like ants; that the white man considers his nation and his business more important to him than himself...

After gathering all the information he concluded that his father may have had vision but lacked realism and flexibility; that his dreams seemed to have been choked by fear and lack of imagination; that he seemed to have preferred dreams to reality; impotence to compromise.

Humbled by the weight of his heritage, he went to the graves of his father and his grandfather which are side by side and holding both, he addressed his father, weeping:"There was no shame in your confusion, just as there had been no shame in your father’s before you. No shame in your fear or in the fear of your father before you. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us.

If it weren’t for that silence, your grandfather might have told your father that he could never escape himself, or recreate himself alone. Your father might have taught those same lessons to you.

And you the son might have taught your father that this world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads, and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramophones, all lifeless instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways ... For all your gifts – the quick mind, the power of concentration, the charm – you could never forge yourself into a whole man by leaving those things (the best of your culture and traditions) behind..."

He left Kenya with the comfort and the firmness of identity that a name provides. He reminded his kith and kin that on this earth, one place is not too different from the other – and each single moment carries within it all that has gone before.
He had the strong conviction that respect does not come from what your parents are but from what you do. He believed in himself, in his ability to bring change to the USA, in his ability to revive "the American dream".

Indeed, he believes that hardship always gives birth to what he calls a new faith – a faith in other people. It is this faith that transformed his "I can" to "we can"; and then to his war cry: Yes, We Can!

His victory leaves us with no doubt that believing in oneself is a major precondition for any victory or success.

Yes, the lifeless things that surround us today can be absorbed into our "old ways" like the Japanese, the Chinese, the Indians and other peoples have proved. Yes, a major precondition of all success is self confidence; believing in ourselves.

This is why Barack Obama set out his identity, thoughts and believes in his two books: "Dreams from my Father" and "The Audacity of Hope", which acted as strong vaccines against all types of blackmail during the campaign.

Today, it is sure that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the USA because he believed in himself!
There is no reason why his victory should not change the image Africa has of itself and of its situation in the world.