By Steven Rogers
On June 30th 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke at the Johnson Memorial Hall of the University of Cape Town, at the same spot that Robert F. Kennedy delivered his now famous “Ripple of Hope” speech nearly half a century ago. These two American politicians that have inspired the world in so many ways and are separated by so many generations, and world events, have been inseparably allied with the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
As Kennedy inspired South African students during the struggle, Obama became a product of that inspirational struggle. Kennedy delivered his motivating speech two years after Mandela’s sentence to Robben Island, while Obama came to Africa as the first black president of the United States, at a time that Mandela lies in critical condition in a local Pretoria hospital. Obama began his three-country continental whirlwind visit with a somber reminder of the evils of slavery at Goree Island in Senegal, before travelling to South Africa, and rounding up his visit in the Republic of Tanzania. Perhaps in anticipation of the Egyptian re-revolution that ousted that country’s first democratically elected president, the president totally avoided Northern Africa. In light of Obama’s numerous challenges, many would argue that maybe this particular visit could have waited. He came to Africa on the heels of a series of domestic and international problems hanging over his shoulder, including the increasingly controversial Snowden international spy scandal, his much criticized drone use that fuelled a series of protests, an unfulfilled election promise to close the unconstitutional Guantanamo detention, and the NSA’s spying on American citizens.
As if these events were not disappointing enough, he is the first Black President of the United States, who unfortunately did not get the photo-op chance of meeting the first black president of post-apartheid South Africa in his presidential capacity. And even as many people here make a comparison of Mandela and Obama as two pioneers of post racial politics in their respective countries, many South Africans acknowledge that the euphoria that surrounded Obama’s historic election in 2008 has faded. He has been criticized for a lack of strong and coherent American foreign policy towards Africa. Ironically, his African policy (or lack thereof) has been lately contrasted with George W. Bush, for the latter’s tremendous support of health and trade initiatives across the continent. And as if by some evil design, it only made matters worse that the Obamas’ visit “coincided” with the Bushes trip to Zambia and Tanzania to promote their HIV/AIDS and cancer fight initiatives – forcing the White House to scramble the president’s schedule to squeeze the former president and former first lady into an already overscheduled presidential program.
But this was no ordinary presidential visit for Mr. Obama. Despite all these challenges, it was Obama’s own epiphany with politics that was more telling than all the events that shrouded his Africa visit – particularly South Africa. It demonstrates in many ways how Obama’s political umbilical cord has been so inextricably interwoven with the South African anti-apartheid struggle to the confessing point that an Obama presidency could have never happened had Mandela, Sisulu, and Biko not laid the foundation here in South Africa. Therefore, even as the president engaged young Africans from across the continent in a town hall style meeting at the University of Johannesburg, even as he eulogized the greatness and iconic images of Pieterson, Mandela, Tutu, and Biko at the University of Cape Town, even as he launched the prestigious Young African Initiative entrepreneurial fellowship that will benefit more than 500 young Africans, and even as he announced his $ 7 billion energy initiative for Africa, it was the South African connection with his own youth and political inspiration that stood out the most.
As Obama himself reflected, “I took my first step in the political life because of South Africa”, because “while Mandela and others were behind the walls of Robben Island, my own government in the United States was not standing by their side”. This was how a 19-year-old student in a California University took his first babystep towards politics that eventually got him kicked off the stage speech barely two minutes after it started. This was how he started reading a lot of Steve Biko’s work in his apparent struggle with race and identify. It was that philosophy that took Obama, a Harvard-‐trained lawyer to the South Side of Chicago to do community organizing as most of his graduating class took to Wall Street.
The choice of the University of Cape Town carried an extra symbolism for America’s first black president particularly for a university that had traditionally been criticized for its racism and lack of diversity. Perhaps as a tribute to Robert Kennedy, Obama re-‐echoed the slain American politician’s famous lines that “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope”. In complete defiance of South Africa’s white apartheid government, Kennedy’s speech in 1966 touched the core of the brutal divisions that cut across South Africa's society including universities, schools, public transportation and suburbs. It was a dark period in a racially segregated South Africa that resonated with many nations in the world who were fighting for equal rights and justice, and in the process, generated a new cadre of world leaders that included Mandela and Martin Luther King. And for president Obama, it was that “tiny ripple of hope” that would later take him to the White House.
Therefore, while the word “hope” sounded completely out of touch in Kennedy’s 1966 speech, and even as it appeared “idealistic” in the run up to the 2008 American presidential elections, perhaps no president in contemporary politics has been better known for, and better exemplifies that illusive word than Mr. Obama himself. As a man, whose biography has no semblance of previous White House occupants, it was in response to what Kennedy called that “hope” to “demolish the borders of history which history has erected between men, within our own nations-‐ barriers of race, religion, social class and ignorance” that led a community organizer to the White House. And as Obama himself told his Cape Town audience, it was that “willingness to act on those ideals and...[to] make a difference” that got him involved in what was known as “the divestment movement” in the United States.
Therefore, as he spoke to an enthusiastic group of a now racially and ethnically diverse group of students at the University of Cape Town, he carried the message that he has always carried to young people in American universities – not to be cynical about politics. But rather to inculcate the power to act on their ideals even when it sounds ridiculous. Even as he was greeted by thousands of protesters in his ancestral continent, he seemed unfazed due to the very fact that South Africa was the springboard of his political life. And for him, it was a homecoming to where it all began. And “Like billions all over the world, [he] – and the American people –have drawn strength from the example of [Mandela’s] extraordinary leader[ship], and the nation that he changed”. Obama knows that a mere speech or even billions of American investments are not going to reconnect him with the continent in the way he’d like to. But this homecoming was a start – an epiphany with his reality. A closeness to home that according to Kennedy, will strip “away the false masks, the illusion of difference which is at the root of injustice and hate and war”. Because for him, coming to South Africa as the first black president of the free world was not only the realization of Robert F. Kennedy’s “ripple of hope”, but even more importantly, it was also the fulfillment of Barack Obama’s “Audacity of Hope”.
Steven Nabieu Rogers, Phd, is a lecturer in Emerging Markets and Old Mutual Fellow at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town. He can be contacted on steven.rogers@gsb.uct.ac.za
(c) Politico 16/07/13
