Despite feeling a touch bombarded by the US presidential race, I own an Obama T-shirt. I cringe slightly at this confession. One might wonder how little me, down south in Africa, has both the time and the money to make an investment in a super-wealthy, faraway political campaign.
So let me clarify that the shirt is a gift. And I wear it – this gesture of course aligning me with the ‘less right” of the two main presidential candidates.
Despite this, I feel slightly indulgent in taking the time to reflect intentionally on the subject of Barack Obama. Especially so, for instance, at the news last week that the detention of two human rights activists from Women of Zimbabwe Arise, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, has been extended.
The two were arrested after participating in a peaceful protest in Bulawayo, in which they demanded immediate access to food aid in Zimbabwe. They were charged under Section 37 1(a) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, for “disturbing the peace, security or order of the public”.
The right to speak one’s mind, particularly on matters of justice, is not one to take lightly. Formal political structures and governments continue to fail us; they increasingly function as the vehicles for the control and suppression of our rights, not only in Zimbabwe or Africa, but all over the world.
With this in mind, T-shirt-toting though I am, I suspect we are being too optimistic if we imagine a better-behaved US from an Obama presidency. Even so, given an anti-Obama campaign strategy laden with disturbing racist narratives, I am inclined to believe a McCain/Palin presidency would be bad for us in Africa. It would be dangerous.
And it led me to painful-stitches-in-stomach-laughter to hear that McCain recently ‘insulted” Obama in referring to him as a ‘European-style socialist”. How dirty! From this position, of course Obama’s success would be favourable. A McCain presidency appears a scary prospect for Americans and for the rest of us innocents elsewhere.
This said, while Obama is probably the favoured candidate for many of us, reports presented at a seminar held at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa suggest that Washington’s foreign policy, whether under ‘President McCain” or ‘President Obama”, would be almost identical to that of George Bush II. Scary stuff.
But one difference between the two, which is both important to me and of consequence for Africa, is their position on the reproductive rights of women. Bush II’s administration, supported by right-wing fundamentalist religious dogma, has systematically diminished the right of choice and access to birth control for many women in Africa. While McCain stands in line with Bush II’s position, Obama does not.
As a ‘pregnant lady” at the moment, I took some time to visit the ‘baby exhibition” held in Johannesburg last weekend. I was surprised to see a business that sells the service (for a R1 000 exhibition special!) of storing your baby’s umbilical cord stem cells.
I thought, ‘Dear lord! I live in a country where women die in childbirth for no other reason than poverty, while others can store stem cells!”
Such evidence of the systematically maintained and growing inequalities between the rich and the poor should remind us to remain sceptical of formal political structures. And it should also make us wary of the dangers that neoconservative, gag-rule-imposing, anti-choice, anti-women US politics pose to our bodies.
So I do wear the T-shirt, because scary McCain/Palin would certainly continue the war on women’s bodies that Bush II began.
Danai Mupotsa is a feminist researcher. She works in the department of comparative literature and cultural studies, Monash, South Africa