Never have I wanted more to throw a brick through the screen of my television. Watching Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sit stoically through a…
Posts Tagged ‘African’
Eric Deggans: For this wise African American, Sotomayor hearings reveal the heart of race conflict in America
July 14th, 2009 |
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Kyle Hotchkiss Carone: How Obama’s Ghana Visit Sets A New Tone In US-Africa Relations
July 13th, 2009 |
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The mere presence of a black U.S. president on Ghanaian soil, speaking to Ghanaian people about Ghanaian problems, marks a welcome rekindling of discourse between blacks throughout the diaspora.
Hope amid horror
July 11th, 2009 |
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By Komla Dumor
BBC World Service, Cape Coast
The 17th Century Cape Coast Castle overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Ghana is a testament to man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.
A few metres below where I am sitting, thousands of black African captives were kept in conditions that make me shudder even to imagine.
They were chained, naked and hungry in hot filthy conditions – waiting for slave ships that would cart millions to a life of degradation and humiliation.
As I went below into the darkness of the cells, those who came through here whispered stories to me in the silence – women clutching crying babies, groans of pain, and tears, yes, so many tears.
I saw the faces of those dragged and whipped, kicking and screaming through the door of no-return into the belly of a slave ship.
This is a desolate, dark, miserable place.
I have been to the Cape Coast Castle before and it is always traumatic.
But in this place of human shame there is a light.
It is a tiny square in the corner of the high wall that the architects of this place provided to ventilate the thousands they so insensitively crammed into this dungeon – through it a single powerful stream of light shines.
No ordinary visitor
Two centuries after the first major attempt to end the slave trade, another visitor with an African father and a white American mother will stand close to where I am and perhaps battle with the same emotions.
But he is no ordinary visitor – Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States.
"Coming to Ghana is, for many African Americans, the equivalent of a spiritual journey"
He is the man who is widely seen to embody the hopes a generation of black, white, Hispanic and Asian people around the world.
The people of Ghana are extremely excited about President Obama’s arrival.
His pictures are everywhere. Songs have been written in his honour.
His choice of Ghana is significant on many levels.
Ghana was the first black African country to attain independence from British rule in 1957 – an inspiration to others across the continent.
At the time, many African Americans, burdened by segregation and discrimination, looked to Ghana and its founder Kwame Nkrumah as a beacon of hope.
The story is told of Vice-President Richard Nixon – the US guest of honour at our independence celebrations – who greeted a well-dressed black man with the question: "So how does it feel to be free"
The man replied: "I don’t know… I am from Alabama."
Frustration
The local papers have been running pictures of a young Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King celebrating Ghana’s independence.
Coming to Ghana is, for many African Americans, the equivalent of a spiritual journey so common to all faiths.
Generations of African American doctors, lawyers teachers and educators still call Ghana home.
At independence, Kwame Nkrumah declared that this was "Our chance to show the world that… the black man can manage his own affairs."
Decades later we are still struggling to prove it.
The frustration runs deep across Africa, from Ghana through Nigeria to Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Contemporary politics does not take notice of something as vague as the word "hope".
The Obama presidency will be measured by how he deals with a global economic crisis, the threat of terrorism and the spiral of environmental degradation.
It would be naive for Africans to assume that the election of Barak Obama means an economic windfall for the continent or that the president does not have a strategic interest in securing this region’s oil.
That ‘thing’
Bill Clinton and George Bush both came to Ghana during their presidencies.
Nonetheless, the emotion involved with the arrival of Barak Obama is immeasurable.
What Barak Obama represents is that "thing" – the thing that Maya Angelou says "Makes the caged bird sing."
I see it in the faces of young girls from northern Ghana who carry back-breaking loads for a few cents in the markets clutching dreams of owning their own business.
I see it in the face of the taxi-driver who works extra hours so his children can go to a better school than the one he attended.
I’ve seen the same look on the face of a young doctor at Korle Bu teaching hospital who is overworked and underpaid and still delivers some of the best medical practice in Africa.
They do not want a handout, they just want a fair chance to achieve their potential.
That look is called "enyidaso" in the Akan language of West Africa.
It is the light that shone hundreds of years ago on the tear-stained faces of the human beings who passed through the Cape Coast dungeons.
Barak Obama calls it "hope."
Komla Dumor presents BBC World Service’s The World Today programme. Born and raised in Ghana, he worked for Accra-based Joy FM, Ghana’s leading commercial radio station before joining the BBC.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Libya’s struggles
July 9th, 2009 |
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Travelling to the Libyan town of Sirte to report on the African Union summit, Christian Fraser considers whether Libya is ready for an era of mass tourism.
It is midnight at Tripoli airport, across the road from the arrivals hall. Beyond high mesh fences and the white glare of towering floodlights, a Chinese workforce is labouring through the night on a new terminal.
The air is hot and heavy. The face of Muammar Gaddafi stares out from a nearby billboard, as if micromanaging his country’s construction boom.
En route to the African Union summit, I had just emerged from the old arrivals hall – dour, disorganised and full of government spooks. I was delayed for an inordinate amount of time while they checked, then rechecked, that rarest of Libyan commodities, a journalist’s visa.
The two faces of Libya, a perfect illustration of where the country has come from, and where it is going.
Once the international pariah, now a state in full-speed transition.
Embracing capitalism
In the past year, Muammar Gaddafi has travelled the world signing profitable oil and gas deals that will help transform Tripoli into the new Mediterranean destination – or so they hope – for an influx of adventurous tourists.
There is still some way to go, but the beachfront is awash with five-star developments the government is building with its millions of petrodollars. No more sanctions, no more socialism.
"Twenty-five thousand new flats," beamed Ahmed, my government minder, as we sped into town past another busy building site – $200,000 (£125,000) each," he marvelled.
I could tell he was an enthusiastic proponent of the new Libyan capitalism. And a loyal subject – a Gaddafi key-ring was hanging from his trouser pocket.
Tourist restrictions
There is much to see and enjoy in Libya.
Spectacular Greek and Roman remains, the open-air galleries of prehistoric rock art and glorious largely uninhabited sandy beaches.
Plus, of course, that frisson that is always associated with visiting a country previously off-limit to Westerners.
And therein lies the rub. As much as Libya may like the idea of tourists, and the hard currency they bring, it has yet to embrace the reality.
Tourists must still travel in organised groups with a government-approved guide.
There is no opportunity to wander unfettered around the well-preserved Roman city of Leptis Magna or the magnificent theatre at Sabratha.
Accommodation shortage
Pity the poor tourist who runs into the Libyan control freakery I experienced last week on the way to this African Union summit.
It was held in Sirte, an undistinguished coastal town just along the way from Tripoli.
The flight to Sirte is a short one. A journey across a long stretch of barren coastline.
Beneath us those remote beaches from which hundreds of illegal African migrants escape to Europe every year. These are the people currently flooding into Tripoli.
I could see why stopping their advance proves such an enormous challenge. Aside from sporadic roadblocks, there is very little between the vast expanse of Sahara and the shoreline from where they set sail in their makeshift rafts and boats.
The building frenzy of Tripoli is yet to reach the distant outpost of Sirte.
"Mr Gaddafi cruised around his manor in one of those ostentatiously large buses favoured by touring rock stars"
Tourists might find a hotel room, but such was the shortage of accommodation during the summit, that journalists and dignitaries would be sleeping on a clapped-out, Panamanian-registered, car ferry brought in specially for the event.
No five-star facilities, these.
We paid top dollar for a cabin cloaked in the faintest whiff of diesel. Mine was already occupied by a cockroach and each day he raced me for the shower attached to the sink.
When Mr Gaddafi travels abroad he takes a Bedouin tent with him. I should have followed suit.
Closely watched
So why would you drag hundreds of summit delegates, 12 African leaders, diplomats, politicians and journalists to a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere
Simple really. It is the ancestral home of Libya’s egocentric leader, who for 39 years has fostered this one-man personality cult.
Throughout the week, he cruised around his manor in one of those ostentatiously large buses favoured by touring rock stars.
For his opening speech, he wore the golden robes of a king. One invited dignitary was so overcome in his presence, she fell to her knees at his feet.
Not satisfied with this all-encompassing power in Libya, the Colonel is even pushing a bold ambition for a unified continent, a United States of Africa modelled on the European Union.
EU ideals Tell that not just to the journalists, but also the VIPs at this summit who were herded from one location to another, closely observed at all times – and whose contact with the outside world was sorely limited by the electronic equipment used by state security, whenever the Colonel was in town.
Is Mr Gaddafi and his "new Libya" really prepared for all that comes with mass tourism The evidence of this African Union summit suggests not yet.
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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.