MAZRUI WRONG IN COMPARING OBAMA TO MANDELA

On his commentary that appeared on Sunday Nation on July 20th titled, “Cut From the Same Cloth? Mandela, Obama and the Dawn of a New Era.” Professor Ali Mazrui articulately traced the metamorphosis of Nelson Mandela from a radical leader of armed resistance into a “conciliatory” statesman of global reputation. However, he goes completely astray when he attempts to compare Mandela with US democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Professor Mazrui argues that both Mandela and Obama are “cut from the same cloth” in the sense of “their embodying a short memory of racial hate, and their impressive readiness to forgive historic intolerance.” Whereas this statement is true of Nelson Mandela owing to his long incarceration and his subsequent grudgeless treatment of that past, Mazrui fails to show any racial injustices that may have been directed towards Barack Obama.

Of course an argument could be made that Mazrui invokes “racial hate” in the case of Obama to collectively refer to the years of oppression that African Americans had to endure, as opposed Obama’s individual grievances. But it falls apart under Mazrui’s own assertion that “Obama’s tolerant multiculturalism may be due to personal factors” such as his lack of a direct ancestral link to those who bore the blunt of the most extreme forms of racism in America.

Obama cannot therefore be seen as an ex-Black Panther who suddenly develops a soft spot for white America as Mandela is an ex Umkhonto we Sizwe firebrand turned preacher of racial tolerance. Furthermore, it is an open secret that Obama’s “blackness” is suspect among some in the African American community as can be seen by his initial poor performance in opinion polls among blacks and the recent, not-so-Freudian slip from Jesse Jackson.

Obama is still young and may well prove in later years to be of the same mold as Madiba. However, he presently seems to be doing nothing more than what a clever Black American politician needs to do in order to win an election. Not even Obama’s denunciation of Reverend Jeremiah White proves, as Mazrui seems to believe, Obama’s “post-racial tolerance”. Obama would not have bothered to give that impressive speech in Philadelphia about race relations in America had it not been for the revelation of Reverend Wright’s controversial sermons. Surely had this “divorce” been based solely on principle, it would have occurred earlier than 21 years down the line,no?