Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Point of View! Africa to Obama: Mind Your Own Business; Young Africans to Obama: Clean your Own House First.

An Igbo proverb states: A good Friend tells you to your face, a hypocritical one smiles before you and talk ill of you at your back.

We can take the wise counsel and make good use of it or continue to lament that  he spoke out of disrespect. I am sure that Obama and the rest of the community of Afro Americans will be very happy if Africa becomes the model  we all want it to be. Our numerous citizens troop out en masse even at the cost of their lives to seek refuge in Europe, while many of our leaders are consumed with the ambitions of elongated  term and primitive accumulation. 

Nkolika

Awka

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From: msjoe21st via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
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Sent: Sunday, August 2, 2015 4:16 AM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Point of View! Africa to Obama: Mind Your Own Business; Young Africans to Obama: Clean your Own House First.

ARTICLES: Point of View! Africa to Obama: Mind Your Own Business; Young Africans to Obama: Clean your Own House First.

Point of View  Point of View is opinion expressed by the identified independent writers on African Affairs. Africa Diaspora Dispatch does not edit the opinion. Last week we chronicled Obama's historic visit to Africa. If you missed the Edition, you can read it: Click Stakeholders are more informed when they get alternative perspectives.  The two articles include the voices of young people. Africa to Obama: Mind your own business by Andrew Mwenda Andrew M Mwenda Andrew Mwenda is Founder and Managing Editor of the bimonthly East Africa Newsmagazine  based in Kampala, Uganda. Like all imperial powers before it, the US seeks to dominate the world in order to exploit it. This is how it sustains her greedy consumption. But to disguise its intentions, the US rewrites history, employs selective indignation, and chooses arbitrary priorities to present its selfish agenda.   United States President Barack Obama is the most admired foreign leader in Africa because he has ancestral roots in our continent. This is partly the reason his ill-informed and stereotypical admonitions of our leaders attracted cheers from a large section of our elite class. But it is also because we African elites have internalised the ideology of our conquerors that presents us as inferior, inadequate, and incapable of self-government.  Bob Marley's words that we must liberate ourselves from mental slavery are important here. In his speech to the African Union in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, Obama acted like a colonial headman lecturing the natives on how to behave as good subjects. Yet behind Obama's seeming concern for our good lies the social contempt he holds us in. Flagrant hypocrisy Why doesn't Obama openly admonish leaders of Western Europe whenever he visits their countries? Is it because they govern better? Who has the right to make this judgement and by what criteria? There is a lot of corruption and widespread human rights abuses (especially of migrant minorities) in Western Europe - not to mention the brutality, genocides, forced labour, and racism that characterised their governance of Africa during colonial rule. The difference between Africa and these nations is that we are poorer in material possessions. But does their present wealth imply better governance? To use Jean Bricmont's analogy from his book Humanitarian Imperialism, the US and Western Europe behave like a mafia godfather who, as he grows old, decides to defend law and order and begins to attack his lesser colleagues in crime, preaching brotherly love and the sanctity of human life - all the while holding onto his ill-gotten wealth and the income it generates. Who would fail to denounce such flagrant hypocrisy? In any case, is the US such a model country in governance to give Obama the moral authority to lecture Africans? In the US, a black person is killed by the highly militarised police force every 28 hours. Scores of black people in the US are stopped and searched every minute for no other reason than the colour of their skin. Blacks constitute 12-13 percent of the US population but 43 percent of its prison population. Although there are only 33 million blacks in the US, there are one million (nearly four percent) of them in jail.  Indeed,  the incarceration rate  of blacks in the US is 10 times that of blacks in apartheid South Africa. According to Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow, there are double the number of blacks in jail than in college. There are more black people in jail today than were enslaved in 1850; and more blacks are disenfranchised today than in 1875, when the 15th amendment prohibiting discrimination in voting rights based on race was passed. In Obama's hometown of Chicago, the total population of black males with a felony record is 80 percent of the adult black male workforce. The 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa Obama admonishes have a combined population of 961 million and their total prison population is 830,000. If Africa jailed its people at the same rate as the US jails its black population, we would have 38.4 million people in jail. Dehumanising Africans But these are not the only state abuses in the US. There are mass surveillance programmes that allow the federal government to eavesdrop on almost every communication of American citizens and allies, the indefinite imprisonment without trial and torture of suspects in Guantanamo Bay and other illegal detention facilities around the world. The corruption of Washington and Wall Street - where corporate profits are privatised and losses nationalised - goes without saying.  Invading sovereign nations and toppling their governments while leaving chaos in their wake, the large scale use of drones which kill innocent civilians in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are the kind of crimes the US commits. This is not an argument of two wrongs making a right. Rather it is to show that Obama's choice to lecture Africa is a product of the social contempt he and his countrymen and women have for black people. Many African leaders do not treat their people with the cruel contempt with which the US treats its black citizens.  True some of our leaders use the police against their political rivals. But the US uses its police daily against innocent poor black people who are not even contesting for political power from the white financial, industrial, and military aristocracy that rules that country. Why dehumanise them? Lecturing Africans Contrary to Obama's self-appointed role as the secular priest of good governance, Africans fight for more freedom, democracy, and clean government daily. And in these struggles, the US has consistently sided with our oppressors. It was complicit in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, supported apartheid South Afr ica against Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC, whom it declared terrorists), financed the terrorist organisation National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and propped up incompetent and corrupt tyrants like Mobutu, Samuel Doe, and Siad Barre. Instead of coming to lecture, Obama should have had the humility to come and apologise to Africans for his country's sadistic adventures on our continent. Indeed, Obama has no moral right to lecture Africans on democracy, human rights, and clean government because his country has been sponsoring corrupt and cruel policies against black people at home and thieving tyrants on our continent. If there are weaknesses in our governance they are ours to struggle against and overcome. Steven Biko, a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, said that the greatest weapon in the hands of an oppressor is never his guns and armies, but the mind of the oppressed. This was clear from the assembled African elites in Addis Ababa who were cheering Obama as he presented himself as the altruist advising our leaders on how to lead us better. Like all imperial powers before it, the US seeks to dominate the world in order to exploit it. This is how it sustains her greedy consumption. But to disguise its intentions, the US rewrites history, employs selective indignation, and chooses arbitrary priorities to present its selfish agenda. Obama being of African ancestry is the best puppet the US uses to disguise its contempt for Africans. But the best he can do is to mind his own business and let us mind ours. You can watch the author on another subject: Aid for Africa? No thanks Andrew Mwenda: Aid for Africa? No, thanks. Point of View   Young Africans to Obama: 'Clean your own house first.' By Aleem Maqbool BBC   From the section    President Obama came to Africa to deliver a "blunt message" to its politicians. But young people in Kenya and Ethiopia had plenty to say to Mr Obama about the state of America.  "Tough love" has been a theme of President Obama's visit to East Africa.  The moments where he really came alive on this trip were not just when he talked of his love for Africa, but also when he spoke passionately about human rights. Young Ethiopians at a coffee shop in Addis Ababa Standing beside the Kenyan president he likened the pursuit of gay rights in Africa to the civil rights struggle in the US. To an enthralled crowd in a stadium in Nairobi he talked of the importance of women in society. He talked of the need to eradicate corruption and treat fairly minority communities, including Muslims in Kenya. "Progress requires that you see the differences and diversity of this country as a strength, just as we in America try to see the diversity of our country as a strength," he said. "I always say that what makes America exceptional is not the fact that we're perfect, it's the fact that we struggle to improve. We're self-critical. We work to live up to our highest values and ideals." American Black Lives Matter Kenyans and Ethiopians were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, even fanatical, about their returning East African son, but there were many who felt America, even Barack Obama, was not in a position to lecture others on some of these points. "Most Americans think about what needs to change in other countries but they need to solve their own problems," Shiferaw Tilahun, 31, tells me in a coffee shop in Addis Ababa.        "They are interested in other people's problems but they don't care about black people in their own country," Shiferaw says. "Most of our black brothers and sisters are suffering in the US,"  It was clear in both countries that the issue of race, more than any other, had damaged people's perceptions of the US. "When I speak to my friends and family here in Kenya, their feeling about America is 'clean your own house first'," says Teresa Mbagaya, 28.   Teresa Mbagaya, a Kenyan-American Teresa is a Kenyan-American entrepreneur we met at the summit in Nairobi attended by President Obama.  She told us that Africans often asked her about the state of race relations in the US having been concerned about reports they had seen on the news. "We're not on the ground so we just get reports from what is on the media, but it is extremely appalling, shocking and horrifying what is going on to the black community in America," says Amanda Gicharu, 29, who we also met in Nairobi.   Amanda Gicharu in Nairobi "Police brutality, all these killings, everything being swept under the rug, investigations don't happen. They definitely have to do something about that and stop the violence,"  In both Kenya and Ethiopia, it was a recurring theme when we asked what "tough love" might need to go in the US' direction, with people saying they felt personally "offended," "hurt" and "insulted" by the treatment of African Americans that they had seen reported. Violence and shootings But it wasn't the only thing that concerned them about US society. Alifie Amalia says the prospect of violence seems more likely in America "The shootings in America for me are scarier than what is happening in Kenya," says Alifie Amalia, 37, in Nairobi. "An attack in our mall is just a one-off, but for America it feels like every day there's some attack, not from Muslims but some random acts in malls or schools." Many Kenyans are upset about American travel warnings imposed on their country in light of recent attacks like those at the Westgate Mall and Garissa University, but some said they had the perception that travellers would be in more danger in America than in their region. "People are dying in schools and churches and it is not fair," Tewedaj Solomon, 24, told us in Addis Ababa. "I don't want to compare but somehow it feels we in Ethiopia can control the violence, you don't get people shooting each other everywhere," she says. Gay Rights Surprisingly, there was one more negative impression of the US that young Kenyans and Ethiopians repeatedly told me about, and it was about a lack of freedom of speech and expression in the US. But this impression was related to the issue of gay rights. It is one topic on which many told us they found President Obama's views unpalatable.    "When Obama declares gay rights is about human rights, most of us feel he's not Christian," says Daniel Abera, 33, in Addis Ababa. Some Kenyan journalists attending the news conference in Nairobi even cheered when the Kenyan president said homosexuality was unacceptable in his country's culture and gay rights was a "non issue". "About gay rights, I think a few people [the US Supreme Court judges] should not decide for the whole country," Hawaii Terfessa, 24, tells me in downtown Addis Ababa. "I know some people want this reform on gay marriage, but there is a group of people who do not, and they have been hated for saying that," she says. Hawaii Terfessa "They should feel free in their country too. All of America should have been asked if they want this step to happen." President Obama's visit has undoubtedly reignited debate in East Africa on sensitive issues. As the stadium in Nairobi emptied after his speech, I caught on my microphone a couple arguing about the president's focus on girls getting an education.  The husband said all the attention on girls was detrimental to progress being made by boys, until his wife told him something she said she had never told him before - that growing up as a girl in her village she had felt invisible.  In Ethiopia, people felt uncomfortable being interviewed about human rights abuses by their own government in its suppression of free media and political opposition, but many told us they were pleased President Obama had raised these issues. It was clear though that Kenyans and Ethiopians perceived that while he was trying to forge a legacy in Africa before leaving office, there were huge issues for Mr Obama to try to resolve at home too.

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