...can lead to great things.
The transcript of the speech gives a clear insight into the Democratic candidate’s thinking on the state of race in America today and more importantly, from a South African perspective, throws light on issues which still divide us 14 years post-apartheid.
It also demonstrates what a powerful force for positive change in Africa Obama could be, if he were to be elected as president of the United States of America. His understanding of the racial divide, what causes it to shift and the ways in which it might be bridged, may well prove to be invaluable in putting this continent on the right track.
[...]
The problems of our fellow South Africans are the problems of us all — if we can use that as our starting point we will make progress far quicker than looking after ourselves. For example, if people are squatting that is not a black problem it is a South African problem. It touches on crime, health, poverty and too many other issues to list here. By dealing with it you reduce many of the problems facing this great nation. This must apply across the board.
Obama’s speech was more than just a Lincoln moment, it was a reaffirmation of the ideals and aspirations of one of the greatest human beings that ever lived — Nelson Mandela — that a rainbow nation, working and living together as one, would occupy the Southern tip of Africa.
Michael Trapido | Barack Obama echoes Mandela: The rainbow nation address
The freedom of the blogs has allowed many of us, e.g. Jeneane, Frank, Bruce (who links further afield), me, and others to bat this one about a while, i.e. since Jeneane and Frank's posts of March 18. By the time our Designer Bloggers had brushed and buffed their contributions, we — with the exception of Jeneane who really probes the implications of wounds over time, had moved on.
To Tibet. But that was the Locke Lama's fault and we have no need to apologise for our meandering. The link between Obama and Mandela had been made and its import dissected and digested.
Now Traps Trapido, one of our better Polished Pundits, gives cause for pause. Taking a couple of steps back to the miracle and wonder of Obama's Mandela Moment, I found — in Traps's entry — clear reinforcement of the ideas tossed about these comments' boxes.
Matching the men to their words, Trapido not only makes the Mandela link — he gives a peculiarly abstract sense of hope to my initial feeling of despair on coming across Obama's speech at Listics.
I had wanted to comment on Obama's speech immediately, Frank having replicated it, but it was too much, too soon... and I was left feeling depressed. Here we South Africans, capable of appreciating a leader of Obama's potential, find ourselves leaderless at a defining time in our history and, across the pond, a potential statesman is being eviscerated by his own people on Fox News.
What a fucking waste. Or so it seemed.
What Traps does is hammer home how South Africans, deprived of an Obama, can learn from the nominee's words and use that learning to realise the future envisioned by Madiba.
But we've a way to go yet: "We are still far too close to the end of apartheid to start thinking of it as the past; it is very much part of the here and now. While many of us would like to draw a line in the sand the reality does not allow for that just yet."
Observer status...
If I do have a problem with both Obama's speech and Michael Trapido's blogging of it, it's that both see a need to distance themselves from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama's pastor certainly does not merely "...simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality." He eschews mealy-mouthed political correctness and tells it like it Goddamn is (and all strength to him for doing so).
Simplicity, stereotyping, and amplification are Obama's stock in trade. On March 15, I labeled our New World Madiba a coconut, a six-time loser, an unmitigated asshole, and a two-faced, double-dealing, low-rent hypocrite.
He deserved it.
Go over to Winter Patriot's. You'll find a very different take on Obama as a whole. WP's saved it all for last and his words pack enormous punch. And not only is he as right as you or me: as one of my political touchstones, I believe he's far better informed than you, me, or both of us put together.
But just as Winter Patriot pens a piece seemingly diametrically opposed to views articulated by Marc Lord, we should remember that nothing and nobody is as clearcut as they seem.
Martin Luther King Jr. frequently behaved like a pig and Madiba was an authoritarian of note. We're dealing with people here and they're inherently flawed.
We discuss in comments how it's unlikely Obama will find himself in the Oval Office this time round. But he has made a name for himself and, in time, a movement — born of globalization and socio-political polarization, and divorced from the AIPAC-vetted, Diebold-fixed mockery of democracy foisted on US-ians, will arise and he will be needed and used.
That is our way.
Neither view excludes the other.
Nevertheless, it's a great blog and, hey, it needed time to gestate. Where I do fault it in favour of the rough-and-ready nature of our day-to-day discourse, is in its tendency towards abstraction in the sense that great sentiments are a bugger to translate to generally accepted practice.
Having been guilty of that ourselves in our entries, we have been able, through interaction over time in the comment box, to grapple with inevitable questions arising from ugly realities. And Jeneane's still hammering away at the Wright stuff and more.
Our questions will not disappear into a mist of media as they tend to do in the rarefied air of Thought Leader.
As Traps himself points out: "In essence, ... a Constitution constructed with all the good intentions in the world, is not enough to set us free or mend the damage caused by the past. It takes South Africans, willing to go about their daily lives with the determination to make those words a reality. This does not happen overnight."
To paraphrase the Locke Lama: "Instead, try thinking of Americans and South Africans as normal human beings like you and me..."
Right on...
And for more on Tibet, refer to Father Christopher and his Garden Tripper, Chris Locke...
