Obama Meets Debate, Protests on Africa Tour

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit on March 27, 2010. The event was a rally to demand justice in the assassination of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah by the FBI on Oct. 28, 2009., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Obama Meets Debate, Protests on Africa Tour

Issues of Palestine, AFRICOM, political prisoners raised in South Africa

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

United States President Barack Obama visited three African states during late June and early July in an effort to remake the image of imperialism on the continent. Met with opposition in Senegal and South Africa and overshadowed by developments in Egypt, the president offered no tangible initiatives for Africa to enhance its relations with Washington and Wall Street outside the existing militarist and exploitative system inherited from slavery and colonialism.

In Senegal, the president and his family visited the slave castle at Goree Island and stood in the “door of no return.” Yet the link between the Atlantic Slave Trade and the current crisis in African political economy was not addressed.

An apparent misunderstanding between Obama and Senegalese President Macky Sall over the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 in California, led to a wave criticism of the visiting head-of-state in the local media. Other attacks were leveled against the U.S. for their apparent imposition on communications systems, traffic and hotels in Dakar.

A blog by Elias Groll in Foreign Policy reported that “Snarled traffic, shut-down streets, and security everywhere. These are things Senegalese news outlets are talking about today -- not development, investment, and American engagement -- as President Barack Obama kicks off a three-country visit to Africa with a stop in Senegal.” (June 27)

This same writer pointed out the contradictions in U.S. intentions and the actual results of a U.S. official delegation on the ground in a West African state that is being visited by the president as an act of endorsement of its current political course. Obama’s visits to South Africa and Tanzania were designed for the same purpose to emphasize support but at the same time offer no real alternatives to the decades of post-independence policy towards the region.

In the Senegalese newspaper Le Populair the headline read “Yankees paranoia at the Radisson.” The paper accused the president of staging a de facto invasion by seizing the first class accommodations, tampering with the communication satellites and closing roads.

The U.S., Le Populair observes, has not only seized the sea and the sky, but also telephone communications --and now they have also added to the list the presidential residence, which is swarming with Secret Service personnel. "These Yankees, they need to be reassured by controlling everything," the editorial bemoans.

Demonstrations Raise Critical Issues in South African Protests

Perhaps the most pronounced and politicized protests against the U.S. president took place in the Republic of South Africa where nearly two decades ago the people organized and mobilized to overthrow white-minority rule. Two main political forces in the struggle against apartheid and the ascendancy of the African National Congress (ANC) to power in the 1994 elections , the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Young Communist League (YCLSA), the youth wing of the South African Communist Party (SACP), organized the demonstrations against Washington’s policies.

At the U.S. embassy in Pretoria, hundreds of protesters held placards and chanted slogans in support of the Palestinians and against Pentagon wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Some burned U.S. flags and called for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners being held across the country.

Obama was also met with demonstrations in Cape Town, the seat of the South African parliament and at the University of Johannesburg in Soweto where he received an honorary doctorate degree. Police used tear gas to disperse crowds at the University as demonstrators demanded that the degree be withheld based upon the track record of the U.S. over the last few years under Obama.

The Muslim Lawyers Association of South Africa went to the Constitutional Court in an effort to obtain a legal order for the arrest of Obama. The organization noted the thousands of deaths through drone attacks and other acts of aggressive warfare as the cause for seeking the detention of the U.S. leader.

Although Obama paid tribute to the legacy of former South African President Nelson Mandela, who led the ANC for many years, there was never any acknowledgement of the role the U.S. played in propping up the racist system of apartheid through military, corporate and political support for decades. In fact the detention of Mandela in 1962 was carried out with the direct involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) resulting in his imprisonment for over 27 years.

In Tanzania Obama’s visit was timed to coincide with that of former President George Bush. A strong emphasis was placed on the fight against “terrorism.” This anti-terrorist propaganda has been the justification for the escalating Pentagon and CIA intervention in Africa.

With both leaders being in Tanzania at the same time it represented the continuity of Washington’s policy toward the continent. AFRICOM was established under the Bush administration but it has been extended and bolstered through executive and legislative action by Obama and the Congress.

Visit Cannot Avoid Real Challenges Facing Africa

Those countries which Obama did not visit illustrated that the U.S. is not able to come to grips with its legacy of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. In Kenya, where the father of the president was born, the government and the people felt slighted with the leader’s avoidance.

Perhaps Obama would not visit because the recently-elected President Uhuru Kenyatta was not the favorite candidate of the White House and the State Department. Kenyatta is under indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, despite the objection to this by the African Union (AU).

In Zimbabwe, where the U.S. along with Britain and the European Union (EU) have imposed draconian sanctions against the government of President Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriot Front (ZANU-PF)--as well as the inclusive arrangement that even brought in the western-backed opposition in late 2008--Obama would not consider a visit. In Sudan where the now-divided South and Khartoum are struggling to work out their relationship after grappling with the political liabilities inherited from British colonialism, the U.S. role has not been helpful but detrimental to the reconciliation of the two states.

Egypt, which has been under U.S. domination since the late 1970s, was undergoing mass demonstrations stemming from the failure of neo-colonial policies that are engineered and enforced by imperialism. When the coup took place on July 3, Obama was arriving back in the U.S. after media reports of consultations between the Egyptian military and the Pentagon.

U.S. policy towards Africa is based upon the economic and strategic interests of Wall Street and the Pentagon war machine. No amount of diplomacy can reverse the declining approval and rising anger towards imperialism on the part of the African workers, youth and farmers. The $7 billion dollars in assistance that was announced during the presidential visit is not enough to buy the goodwill and deference to the world’s leading imperialist state.

Another leading Senegalese paper asked rhetorically, “Should we glorify or grieve that the president of the leading economic power in the world has chosen our country for his first real tour of the African continent?" Sud Quotidiene queried. "We would have liked to welcome President Barack Obama in the heat of a fraternity found unreservedly with enthusiasm and hope, like a prodigal son who returns welcomed and wreathed in glory to the land of his ancestors!" the article went on.

"But the results are far from satisfactory, and it must be recognized that Obama has not lived up to the expectations placed upon him by Africans, his black compatriots, and defenders of human rights," the publication concluded.