By Shey* Benjamin Serkfem
About 5 am Wednesday, November 5, 2008, CNN's 'Breaking News' projected to the world that Obama is President-Elect of the United States of America - the most powerful Republic in the world!
As Obama's rallying victory speech would later confirm, that was not just 'Breaking News' but a 'News Eruption' whose explosion was, indeed, resounding! Obama's Presidency is an eruption produced by the magma of humanity that has been lying deep beneath the volcanic mountain of mistrust and fear between and amongst races.
Mistrust and fear that divide, coupled with ignorance that comes from misunderstanding diversity. The evil that emanates from misuse of human, social, economic and intellectual differences have all kept us apart but, unlike the USA, some of our leaders would rather entrench us in a delicate union rather than build a Republic to which each and every son and daughter has a claim in his or her own right.
For someone born of an African father and a Caucasian mother, to become the President of a country where the earliest Africans did not enjoy the comfort of friendship and warm sheets but the bruise and scratch of chains and shackles is a revelation for all of humanity.
By my reckoning, Barrack Obama is not a 'Blackman' as generalised perception tainted by prejudice has it. How come that, even after the rise of gender consciousness across the world, whites still consider any black-white mix to be black? Then, so be it! I wept with joy and amazement at both occasions of this 'Blackman's' selection for enthronement on January 20, 2009.
As tears rolled down my face, it appeared unimaginable but true that, an 'African - African' or should I say a 'Nso-Cameroonian', should be moved to that extent about an African-American. But, being a Germano-Anglo-French Cameroonian, I should shed tears of sheer emotional explosion from the lessons and parallels that a multi-racial American epoch-making event reveals and inspires!
Yes, tears and why not, if as a pathfinder in a ruby Republic tuck deep in the natural resource-rich armpit of Africa I:
- Am bombarded by poverty, misery and lack of opportunities
- Live in communities with broken social and economic coordination
- Live the effects of deficient leadership and confused followership hampered by destructive politics and misrepresentation of the tribal character of our nationhood
- Cannot put a finger on the ideals of my Republic because they are absent, not thought-through or are insufficiently communicated by those in whose hands power was dropped by either colonialism or enlightened despotism. Many an African Nation is still to witness politicians earn power through dialogue and the political art of convincing the electorate.
Why should I not join the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Winfred Oprah and others to be tearful and yet joyous if political orphanhood is a reality for many socio-cultural minorities and the underprivileged in Cameroon.
If politicians are still pitting one region of Cameroon against another on lies that challenge common historical, cultural and current social backgrounds, then it is our common duty and call to be moved and to start the journey for our own dawn. If politicians are not encouraging and forging the building of new relationships across different groupings across the country we must bring forward a 'new generation of Cameroonian politicians' who are willing to take lessons from Obamarism.
Not long from now, our own 'racial' and 'social' divisions, fuelled by self-seeking unscrupulous politicians and their coyotes, must become a thing of the past. The tragedies of Rwanda, DR Congo and Kenya must not be let unto our Atlantic shores nor find a tree to perch on in our rainforest or anywhere on our 4100m peak Mt Cameroon!
* Shey is a nobility title for 'custodians of peace & culture' amongst the Nso people in the hinterlands of the NW Region of Cameroon. Shey* Benjamin SERKFEM is Chief Executive of PEOPLE EARTHWIDE, an environmental education organisation based in Buea, CAMEROON.
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