Like everyone else on the planet, I was interested, first in the election of Barak Obama to the office of President-elect of the United States. I watched it while visiting my family in Connecticut. This state was pretty solidly behind the Democratic candidate and it was a rare event for me to find myself on the winning side. So many times in my former incarnation in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, I lost. This was because I was, and remain, an unrepentant `liberal'. However, this term is subject to constant re-definition. In Rhodesian-speak this description meant, to those of us who called ourselves liberal, that we were non-racial. I have said this many times before but it bears repeating: in the days of RF rule we were accused of being `commies' and, more ignorantly, by the more racist element of our society `kaffir lovers'.
The term`liberal' if applied to our Rhodesian/Zimbabwean ilk has taken on a negative meaning in the past decade or so because it implies that we were/are bending over backwards to advertise or prove our non-racial outlook, thus offending or irritating people of colour. `Patronizing' is possibly the best word for it.
How to escape all this in the new age of Obama?
I was fortunate to get a copy of Time magazine last week in which leading Afro-Americans gave their views on Barak Obama, before that great `inauguration' event. One of these famous men, Andy Young, visited Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe: he was a part of the `Anglo-American' thrust to end Rhodesian isolationism and bring Zimbabwe back into the international fold. We `liberals' in Rhodesia's Centre Party were privileged to meet him briefly and so it was with great interest that I read his particular `take' on Barak Obama. Of all the acres of newsprint and media-speak, his words were the first to express something I hoped would eventually be admitted by some guru, some individual whose credentials regarding race are untainted by the historic complexities of a racially unbalanced world order. This, in part, is what he said:
"... He [Obama] never set himself up as the saviour of the world. He set himself up as someone who articulates and represents and can hopefully lead us to be the best Americans that we can be. He isn't just black; he's an Afro-Asian-Latin European. [my emphasis]. That means he's a global citizen.... he defies categorization"
That's an attitude I have long awaited - in the hope that some inspired leader would shape it - as the `new world order' we were promised at the end of the Cold War, in the last decade of the 20th Century.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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