Taking ownership of an American president

A talk show host on a Cape Town radio station was joking (Wednesday, November 5 2008) about how a coloured won the F1 title on Sunday and how another coloured won the US presidential election.

I had never thought about it like this but I guess when somebody achieves something in life, everybody wants to take ownership of you.

So while everyone refers to Barack Obama as America’s first black president, I suppose there would be many people on the Cape Flats who would identify with him as a “coloured”.

This reminded me of my high school principal in Hanover Park who always used to preach to us about how the world was “becoming brown”. “Die wereld word bruin,” he used to say, “wit melk in swart koffie gegooi and jy kry bruin.” (The world is becoming brown. White milk thrown into black coffee and you get brown.)

I suppose, technically, one could argue that Obama is coloured (born of a white mother and a black father) and that is why the Cape Flats would want to take ownership of him. In the same way, the Kenyans want to take ownership of him because of his Kenyan roots.

But the most important fact about Obama, as far as I am concerned, is not the fact that he is coloured or black, but that he is an inspirational human being. I listened to his acceptance speech this morning and I was hugely impressed by his humility and the almost sombre tone of his speech. He could so easily have been triumphant. He could so easily have pointed a finger at John McCain. But he did not and that is probably something that we could learn from this man who is probably set to become one of the greatest American presidents ever.

And that is the other important thing about Obama. He is an American and as such the only people who can really claim ownership of him are Americans. No matter how hard we huff and puff on the Cape Flats or in Kenya, Obama’s presidency does not necessarily mean that the US government is now going to concentrate more on Africa or give more aid to Africa.

Maybe part of the reason why Obama’s acceptance speech was so tempered was because he realised the importance of the job that he has just been appointed to and he realised the expectations that will be on his shoulders. He has promised to cut taxes for working class Americans, he has promised to pull US troops out of foreign war zones and he has to fight off a potential depression in the US economy.

I must admit that I have been a bit irritated with all the references to Obama being the first black president of the US. I don’t think that was an important part of his campaign. I believe that he campaigned on the basis of wanting to make a difference to American society. He is going to be the 44th president of the US.

I also believed that the people who voted for him did not vote for him because he is black. I think they voted for him because he represented hope for a troubled nation.

The point about taking ownership is that South Africans are not very good at doing so. We often do not take ownership of our problems. We expect government to do things on our behalf.

The one thing that we can learn from the Obama experience is that we should not always play the race card. If race is a problem, we should just do something about. Obama did and now he is going to be America’s president.