The best news to hit the African continent so far this year (apart from our fellow apartheid-style newspaper’s exposé of the indescribably slimy Jonathan Moyo’s wife-beating, beer-swilling, Kentucky-munching shopping spree south of his own impoverished border) is that George W Bush will not be visiting our fair shores after all.
The two-gallon Texan probably imagined that the news would be received with wails of anguish and despair in presidential mansions from Abuja to Zanzibar. But I would like to think that Africa’s new(ish) generation of leaders heaved a collective sigh of relief instead (there’s a vote of confidence in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development from an unexpected quarter, for starters). Even Robert
‘Rambling Rob” Mugabe would find it difficult to sustain a conversation with the Punk from El Paso. Let alone what the various first ladies concerned would have made of the president’s timid-looking, boxing-crazy wife. (We never did believe that cock-and-bull story about the pretzel, the TV remote control and the black eye, did we?)
Anyway, there wasn’t much of a ripple across the Dark Continent when the president’s visit was cancelled in favour of a war with the Sultan of Baghdad. We had other things to worry about. Like getting Jonathan Moyo to pay VAT on his luxury goods, and stop beating his wife on foreign soil, for starters — at Christmas time, at that. You must beat your own wife in your own country. (Or husband, for that matter, as Mrs Bush has shown in America.)
As far as Africa is concerned, Boy George’s decision to cancel probably had as much to do with Iraq (and with personal insights from Michael ‘Hold Your Nose, this is Lagos” Jackson) as with the fact that he already has enough Africans on his hands as it is, what with Colin Powell and, especially, Condoleezza Rice occupying offices just down the corridor in the White House. Condoleezza is probably as close to Africa as Boy George felt he needed to get to prove to the United Nations that he had the interests of the whole world, and not just the Texas oil, beef and Bible constituency, at heart in his war against the Arabs —carefully selected Arabs, indeed, but ragheads nonetheless.
(And, come to think about it, Condoleezza is probably the reason why Mrs George W let rip with that invisible haymaker from out of far left field in the first place — although one would hesitate to put George W Bush in the Bill W Clinton league when one is busy speculating on this kind of White House terrain, under almost any circumstances.)
The third best news for Africa in the New Year, however, is that the Reverend Al Sharpton has entered the race to unseat the very same Boy George as president of the Free World in 2004.
Now, I know we aren’t allowed to vote in that American electoral contest that Gil Scott-Heron once dismissed with the comment, ‘Mandate? My ass,” (pointing out that barely 36% of the people eligible to vote would turn out at a given American election, in any case, and of that 36%, a slim majority would decide who would go on to hold their finger on the nuclear button that could eliminate the rest of us, let alone continue to impose farm subsidies that cripple the rest of the world and outrageously unfair globalisation practises in all other areas as well).
But there is a rising groundswell of feeling (once again) that says that even if the rest of the world can’t participate in the choosing of the US president, we should at least have a say in the way things are going to play out on the planet we all inhabit. And if that were to become a reality (and it would prove that there really was a God if it did, which there clearly isn’t) my vote (in the absence of any more interesting challengers so far) would go to the portly, ebonixy, loud-mouthy, Rapunzel-haired, politically impaired Reverend Al.
So why so perverse as to opt for a man with such a brazenly incorrect haircut?
Well, first of all, he is, to all intents and purposes, a black man, and we’ve never tried out one of those in the hot seat anyway.
Secondly (and this leads on directly from the first point), as a black man, he would hardly be likely to turn down a trip to Africa in favour of a military campaign in the Arabian desert, whose outcome was a foregone conclusion in the first place.
Let’s face it. You can’t imagine Al Sharpton turning down a chance to hang out in Lagos and Abidjan and Kinshasa and Johannesburg, the continent’s capitals of fun, funk and feasting, for even half a second.
‘Saddam who?” you can hear him slurring into his cellphone. ‘Tell him to come on down here and let’s talk. I got a whole grilled sheep sitting in front of me, and the beer is cold. Plus the women is like you can’t believe.”
True, the Reverend Al (who has been preaching the gospel since the age of four, mark you, and was ordained as a fully fledged Pentecostal minister at the tender age of 10) might be almost as challenged as the godless Bush when it comes to foreign policy, per se.
But I will bet my bottom dollar that he would, if elected, be far more inclined to learn what the rest of the world is about. And he would, as he says in his election manifesto, be totally disinclined towards a bone-crushing, blood-spilling, people-displacing, oil-grubbing war with Iraq.
If he could be persuaded to bring the superbly constructed Serena Williams on board as his vice-presidential running mate, the odds would, in my humble opinion, be far more in his favour.
And, with his long-time protector and adviser James Brown at his side, I know that he would be one down-home, people-pleasing, dawn-to-dawn partying visiting-president of the U S of A in Africa.
We live in hope.
Archive: Previous columns by John Matshikiza