Lessons of the Obama Victory

Some Lessons from the Obama Victory

I was wrong and as I said before this was one time I was happy to be proved wrong. I was one of those who said America would not elect a black man or a half black man to the White House. America has surprised me and many others by stretching its hands towards hope, daring to swim the current of prejudices and conservatism, looking foreword and defeating the apathy that was said to have gripped the young generation.

Barack Obama will face very hard and difficult hurdles and it is not clear, as he himself admitted, that the jump would be easy. That aside, the lesson of this Obama victory is not, for me, in the bright possibility that Africa would now get a better deal from callous Washington. Those Ethiopians who dream of Obama giving us Ethiopians and Africans the moral and other tools to achieve liberation are still missing the mark. Hail Obama but be real is my message. The gracious concession speech by McCain did show that American democracy for all its failings is still worthwhile to observe and educational in that such a similar situation in Ethiopia would have to be based on years of struggle, sacrifice and experience. The Obama victory gives us the lesson on the primary importance of organization. We now have half baked politicians who rile against political organizations and imagine they can achieve victory over a ruthless enemy like the TPLF by just acting like a movement. The Obama machinery was based on an extensive and meticulous organization, from the grassroots up and in the Ethiopian context this highlights the need for patriotic political organizations to be strong enough to reach out and mobilize as many people as possible for the all round struggle. We do not have in Ethiopia a peaceful democratic situation in which we can go from door to door to rally people. Yet, in our context, this does mean not the dissolution of political organizations but their consolidation, not the adoption of tactics that make the struggle victim to the machinations and whims of the ruling clique but makes the people part and parcel of the final push for radical change--the downfall of the regime. In other words, the lesson is get up/wake up and strengthen the political organizations genuinely fighting against the anti people regime instead of prattling about a non party movement from exile or setting up laughable exile "government" by political nonentities.

The other lesson is that people should put their money where their mouth is. Ordinary people worked hard and donated their hard earned money to Obama. Have we worked that hard to help the struggle advance? In our context, have we done the necessary to push the struggle ahead, to make the people's organizations strong? This is one primary question that must be asked to derive the pertinent lesson from the Obama victory. Of course, the other issue concerns leadership and strategy. Obama doggedly followed a course charted with clarity and was able to go against odds to achieve victory. Do we have such determined leaders with a clear idea of who is the enemy and how to go about defeating it? Or have we been backing false prophets while heaping insults and attacks against those who were and are practically struggling to bring the regime down? The ongoing attempt by some groups to take part in the fake 2010 election of the TPLF is but a wrong strategy and choice and fails to realize that you must know what fights to fight and avoid the wrong path to the wrong destination.

Obama has mentioned a new dawn of American leadership of the world and this is one thing no genuine African can or should accept. We do not need American leadership be it by Bush or Obama as we want to lead ourselves. We do not want a world dominated by one super power however enlightened it may claim to be. We want to lead ourselves; we want to be free and so the new dawn of American leadership that Obama is talking about cannot be ours. In fact, it may be a continuation, albeit softly softly holding the big stick, of the arrogant "I am your leader" stance of Washington. The American assumption that it is the world or the world wants it to lead should be laid to rest. But it is still there and this is yet another lesson that e have to digest in the place of our baseless hope that America under Obama will deliver us wretched souls from pro Washington dictatorships. The election of Obama shows that America has still the capacity to surprise us and we can only hope that it continues to do so pleasantly and not be being more of the same, demagogy notwithstanding. Obama owes his victory to massive vote of the youth in his favor and this was a youth that was said to be deep in political apathy. This has a lesson for Ethiopia too. The politicians who holler at the "apathetic youth" need to rise up and mobilize it for action. Obama showed this can be done with new ideas, hopes and dreams of change that touch the youth at its core. In the Ethiopian context, a replay of the fetid ethnic chauvinism that ruined the country up to now cannot be galvanizing. Elites who recycle worn out political clichés (and badly at that) cannot fire up anybody but their own illusions. Leaders who dare not lead and pay the sacrifice necessary cannot lead the people out of the desert.


We Ethiopians can and will defeat the Meles dictatorship and we can save our country and reclaim it for democratic change. This is the task of the people. Let us not short-circuit ourselves by handling over our destiny to others or by shirking away from the sacrifice that the struggle demands. Obama's victory has this lesson too. We can bring change but we as a people must fight for it. There is no other way.