Blog - Obamamania is over in Kenya

In Kenya, Obamamania is over. At least, so says my morning daily here, Walfadjri.

Its Nairobi correspondent has been out and about on the streets of the Kenyan capital and the comments he relays speak volumes. Kenyans were proud of Obama because during his campaign ‘he never stopped talking about his country of origin’, as one commentator put it. ‘We really thought that his election would mean the end of suffering for the African populations,’ laments another. 
 
Except that Obama himself did not constantly harp on about his African heritage. His opposition brought up his foreign background much more frequently, mainly to call his uncontested American citizenship into question. Obama himself, meanwhile, made it understood that sure his multicultural roots were well known - but he was running for the presidency of the United States, nowhere else. The rest, as they say, is history.
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All this reminded me of a sketch by a Cameroonian stand-up comedian. One evening, in a cultural centre in the capital Yaoundé, he impersonated a Grand Chief. He, the Chief that is, claimed to have a direct blood relationship with Barack Obama. ‘Yes!’ he rejoiced, ‘I am family! And I soon as I heard that my uncle's nephew three times removed had become president I wrote to him and asked him not to forget us. He can’t! He must take care of the school fees for my children, nephews, cousins and the rest of the village. And mind you, that’s just the beginning!’ The audience were rolling in the aisles.
These days, as Walfadjri reports, a lot of Kenyans have come to accept that Obama is not their president either. One of them is quoted as saying, ‘we should finally stop pinning our hopes on Europe and the United States...’ and another interviewee in Nairobi urged her fellow nationals to ‘get to work on our own problems and use our own strengths.’.

Chief among those would be the problem that Obama himself has highlighted on his visits to Africa. The Cameroonian Chief and the disappointed Kenyans are of an old mindset, tied to the old ways of governing. Personal rule, clientelism and patronage. If a member of your extended family gets into a position of power, the entire family profits. But that is not government as the US president understands it.
‘If people cannot trust your government to do the things for which it exists,’ he told an applauding and mostly young Kenyan audience a few years ago, ‘all else is lost.’
Personalised rule
And with “people” he clearly meant all people, not just the ones you know. Obama’s message was principally about getting rid of personalised rule and creating institutions. A trenchant message, especially in a country like Senegal, which is resolutely moving in the opposite direction and none the better for it.
That is not to say that personalised rule is all bad and that no-one profits from it. A former Central Bank official I met years ago embezzled enough funds to replenish the orchards in his hometown and provide employment to hundreds of people. ‘Look – they all steal,’ one local journalist remarked. ‘Now, if they all act like this fellow we would not need any aid,’ he concluded.
True that. But the basis of all this generosity was still: theft and the official doing the stealing and redistributing was later put in jail. The fruit operation was heading towards the danger zone. And this is why Obama’s point still stands. Less personal rule, less patronage and more reliable institutions, please. Africans increasingly demand it. And most definitely deserve it.