Africa can only fantasise about Obama’s victory

In my country Somalia, the most homogenous country in Africa, where people belong to the same race, speak the same language and worship God in the same religion, a neighbour slaughters his neighbour on primitive clan supremacy while some Somalis still suffer from inhuman social and cultural segregation (khaleejtimes.com) due to psychological prejudices.

In Darfur, thousands of people are killed in cold blood simply because they have a slightly darker skin than their tormentors. In South Africa, a country seen as the icon of democracy and freedom in Africa, the rainbow nation of Nelson Mandela - Africa’s world statesman, African immigrants are lynched and their families burned alive. This in the country that all Africans had for decades prayed and sang for its freedom.

While Obama rose above the racial divide and symbolised hope for all Americans, Africa is immersed in an internecine fratricide and people have lost hope even in their prayers.

Africa had its share of great men: men in whose shoes Obama can only dream to fill. Epoch making figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Ahmed Sékou Touré, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Jomo Kenyatta, Ahmed Ben Bella, Agostinho Neto, Amilcar Cabral, Nelson Mandela and others. But with the exception of a few lucky ones, the majority of these African independence heroes were deposed and exiled, or slaughtered in cold blood by fellow countrymen. Some ended up as brutal dictators or died broken and disheartened in their old age.

As a result the continent is plagued by a failure of leadership, military dictatorships, corruption, nepotism, poverty, disease, wars and lack of respect for human dignity. African children are maimed, abused and deprived of their childhood and robbed of their future by ruthless warlords who use them as mortar fodder. Mothers and the elderly are forced to flee from bush to bush on bleeding foot from Darfur to Congo, through Somalia, in search of a safe place to rest and cook a meal for their emaciated children.

In a hopeless situation like this Africans might be forgiven for embracing Obama’s victory as their own. But the reality is that Obama’s rise to the highest office in America will only increase the exodus of African youth from the continent. More African youth will lose their lives in the high seas in search of realising Obama’s dream in western countries. If African youth were forced to cross the Atlantic Ocean in chains as slaves 500 years ago, Africa’s future manpower are now braving death on the seas to escape from poverty stricken Africa. Change for Africa can therefore only come by hard work from inside and not by fantasising on others’ victories.