Brian Raftopoulos argues that the SADC mediated talks between ZANU-PF and MDC were undermined by the unwillingness of Zanu PF to allow for a significant opening up of political spaces in the country. He further argues that SADC's endorsement of an outcome that did not take broad democratic principles into account was in effect an endorsement of Mugabe

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/356/46870map.jpgThe 2007 SADC mandate to South Africa to broker an agreement between Zanu PF and the MDC should be seen as an extension of the “quiet diplomacy” that has been the hallmark of the South African and SADC approach to the Zimbabwe crisis since 2000. It took on an added urgency after the brutal public beating, arrest and torture of opposition and civic leaders in March 2007 and the widespread attacks on the MDC structures that followed thereafter. A combination of international pressure and the obligation by SADC to be seen to be taking action on the Zimbabwe question, led to an Extra-Ordinary SADC Heads of State Summit in Tanzania at the end of March 2007 at which South Africa was given the facilitation mandate on Zimbabwe.

There was widespread cynicism in many quarters both within and outside of Zimbabwe about the possibility of success of such an intervention, given the history of SADC’s supine position on Mugabe’s authoritarian regime. However it also presented an opportunity for national, regional and international forces to navigate a common approach out of the Zimbabwean debacle by reaching a political agreement that would be broadly acceptable to all sides.

For the MDC, weakened by the split in the organization since 2005, there was little alternative to such talks, as other methods of confronting the Mugabe regime had hitherto been handled with characteristic intolerance and repression by Zimbabwe’s ruling party. Mugabe, under strong pressure from SADC to enter the dialogue, had little option but to at least be seen to be willing to talk to the opposition. The South Africans, always keen not to make any interventions on Zimbabwe without regional support, saw this as an opportunity to push their “quiet diplomacy” agenda, and perhaps end up with their longstanding hope for a reasonably free and far election that would result in a Government of National Unity led by a reformed Zanu PF. The EU and the US, long frustrated by Mugabe’s intransigence and the regional and continental solidarity he continued to receive, also had little alternative but to allow the “point man” Mbeki the time to play his hand.

Mbeki started out with the intention that the dialogue between Zanu PF should achieve three objectives. Firstly both parties should endorse the decision to hold parliamentary elections in 2008. Secondly they should agree on the steps that should be taken to ensure that all concerned accept the elections as being truly representative of the “will” of the Zimbabwean people. Thirdly, that there should be agreement by all political parties and “other social forces” on the measures that should be implemented and respected in order to facilitate a legitimate election. The “other social forces” referred to the civil society groups who were cast in a more or less supporting role in the whole play.

Towards the end of 2007 the facilitation had, in the words of the MDC, reached “significant but not full consensus” on a number of areas in a political agreement covering issues of violence, sanctions, land, abuse of traditional leaders and food aid. The talks themselves, begun in an atmosphere of enormous distrust, appeared to have made some progress, with Zanu PF swallowing the bitter pill of negotiating with an opposition party that it had since 1999 labeled a foreign construction.

The dialogue also provided the divided MDC with an opportunity to work together as joint negotiating partners, even as attempts to re-unite the two formations were continuing parallel to the SADC facilitation. Discussions on the various aspects of the SADC dialogue added to the urgency of the need for the two MDC’s to at last work towards an election pact that would allow them to fight the 2008 Presidential and general elections together. Moreover it was clear to the MDC negotiators that if the talks were to break down with Zanu PF it had to be seen to be the fault of Mugabe’s party, and not due to any obstructiveness on the part of the opposition.

As matters transpired it was precisely the intransigence of Zanu PF and the unwillingness of Zanu PF to allow for a significant opening up of political spaces in the country, that lead to an impasse in the negotiations at the end of 2007. Notwithstanding some small changes to the media and public order legislation, the ruling party proved unwilling to make substantive changes on the issues that would affect the transitional political arrangements that would precede the 2008 elections. At the centre of the political deadlock that emerged in December 2007 were three areas: the date of the election; the timeframe for the implementation of the agreed reforms; and the process and modality of the making and enactment of a new constitution. Mugabe’s unilateral proclamation of the election date for 2008, outside of an agreement of these substantive issues, effectively put an end to the SADC facilitation process.

The SADC announcement on the 4th February 2008 that Mbeki’s facilitation had resulted in the political parties reaching an “agreement on all substantive matters relating to the political situation in Zimbabwe” and that the matters outstanding were merely procedural, was the worst kind of political dishonesty. What might have been a principled stand by the outgoing President Mbeki turned into another disgraceful endorsement of the politics of a repressive regime.

The SADC has once again demonstrated its inability to distinguish between Africa’s concern for imperialist interventions, and its commitment to the democratic and human rights of the region’s citizens. It has subordinated the latter to a grubby solidarity with a repressive political regime that has transformed a lofty Pan Africanist discourse into a spurious attempt to legitimize a authoritarian political project. The regional organization had an opportunity to send an unambiguous message to Mugabe that unless he fulfilled the objective of establishing the conditions for a broadly acceptable free and fair election, he could not expect the customary solidarity of SADC. Such a position could have changed the dynamic of Zimbabwean politics decisively and helped to ensure that further intransigence on Mugabe’s part would be met with stronger censure in the region.

That SADC once again took the line of least resistance has demonstrated its lack of commitment to questions of democratic principle, and its priority of protecting libration leaders who have long failed their citizens. However perhaps a Makoni victory in the forthcoming elections will satisfy the need by some SADC members for a reformed Zanu PF solution, for a long time the real objective of “quiet diplomacy.”

*Brian Raftopoulos, Director of Research, Solidarity Peace Trust. This article first appeared in the Mail and Guardian.

** Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Mary Ndlovu argues that in spite of the obstacles placed by ZANU-PF, Zimbabwean people must at a minimum strive to vote Mugabe out of power and elect a leadership that will unite Zimbabwe, rebuild the economy and deliver justice and healing as opposed to revenge

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/356/46869mugabe.jpgAnyone trying to predict the outcome of the Zimbabwean election must be either bold or foolhardy or both. No sooner has a prophesy gone to press than a new factor slips into the equation and everything has to be re-calculated. Commentators are reduced to scenarios – and the number of scenarios required to cover all eventualities and twists of fate multiplies by the day.

And yet six short weeks ago it all looked sealed and delivered to Robert Mugabe. Morgan Tsvangirai’s formation of the MDC had refused, against their own party’s and President’s apparent interests, to form a coalition with the Mutambara faction. Without a united opposition, ZANU PF could not fail to win. Nothing would change, our downward rush to disaster would not be halted.

If a week is a long time in politics, six weeks is an eon. Enter Simba Makoni, and it all looked different. For the first time, the long talked-of split in ZANU PF would make a difference at the polling stations. For the first time, there would be a three-way contest for the top position. For the first time, Mugabe might not know who would do his bidding and who would subvert it. For the first time, there could be a run-off vote.

As campaigning has picked up to full steam, several further factors have come into play. The economy deteriorates at a faster pace than ever, with the value of the Zimbabwe dollar dropping by mid March to one tenth of its value in the middle of January. Food is either unavailable or unaffordable, and ZANU PF seems to be short of supplies to give out to their loyal supporters (if they can identify them). The civil service goes on strike and has to be enticed back by massive salary increases, which in fact, it seems will mostly not be paid before the election. Even the army have yet to be paid the amounts promised. The salary increases will further increase the pace of the downward plunge in standards of living as inflation spirals upward.

Even more important, as opposition candidates move into the rural areas, a miracle seems to be happening – the rural voters are awakening from the trance which made them believe that ZANU PF was their party and Robert Mugabe their man.

But the questions only multiply. Who will the rural voters support in place of Mugabe – Makoni or Tsvangirai? And who will they vote for in the parliamentary elections, where instead of the straight ZANU PF-MDC choice of the last three elections, there are sometimes two ZANU PF candidates and two or even three MDC candidates, plus several others, including independents supporting Makoni.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/356/46869billb.jpgWhat kind of chaos will result as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission attempts to stage a highly complex election composed of four ballots being cast and counted in 11,000 polling stations? What will Mugabe do if he realizes that he has lost any possibility of winning the vote and at the same time can’t rely on a dedicated rigging system? Will he rely on the military brass, who insist they will not allow anyone else to win? And will they be able to rely on their troops, reportedly supporting opposition candidates, and even said to be short of ammunition? All or at least some of these questions will be answered very soon, but to try to predict them requires a high level of audacity.

Are there any certainties regarding this election? Two very important ones.

The first is that there is no minutest possibility of a “free and fair” election. Those observers from SADC who boast that it can still be so are only destroying their own credibility. The government has totally ignored amendments to the Electoral Act, to POSA and AIPPA. There is no independent electronic media, there is blatant campaigning for the ruling party in the state media, there is bias in the behaviour of the police, the arrangements for the electoral process are shambolic, with ZEC even having to withdraw some of their own information pamphlets, no meaningful voter education has been allowed, not to mention the chaos of the voters’ roll, the partisan nature of the delimitation which went before and the uneven allocation of polling stations. And now the familiar process of last-minute amendments to the Electoral Act has begun – using the Presidential Powers Act to reverse changes made by agreement during the Mbeki-led mediation

The second certainty is that this election presents the electorate with two tasks: getting rid of the incumbent President in spite of the unevenness of the playing field, and replacing his government with one which can unite Zimbabweans to renew and rebuild the Zimbabwean nation in all its aspects.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/356/46869Makoni.jpgAre Zimbabweans capable of using the seriously flawed electoral process to remove Mugabe, or will he manage to hang on once again? That is the first issue, and there is no doubt that with the entry of Simba Makoni into the game, it becomes a distinct possibility. Why? Because Makoni has created the necessary split in ZANU PF, and he has offered a three-way contest. This makes it very difficult for any of the three to win over 50% of the vote. But who will the ZANU PF deserters vote for? Sizes of crowds and results of rudimentary opinion polls can not be relied on, and people in rural areas are still making acquaintance with the challengers. Makoni apparently believed that he needed to present himself as ZANU PF in order to gain the disaffected vote, but he could be wrong. Once the spell is broken, people may desert not only the leader but the party as well. Tsvangirai is reported to be drawing large crowds at rallies in smaller towns, but Makoni too is being greeted with excitement as he whistle-stops through rural areas.

Will the people speak for Makoni, or will they speak for Tsvangirai, and will Mugabe be able to stifle their voices through manipulation of the process? These are the questions that this election should answer.

To look at the last question first. There is no doubt that there is a loosening of the hold of state security over the people, even in Mugabe strongholds. The fear factor and the patronage factor are still there, but their influence will not be as great this time in securing ZANU PF votes. The rigging factor is impossible to calculate. It will surely play some role, but if people vote in large numbers, as it seems they may do, it will be more difficult, it may have to take place at the very top, and the loyalty of the riggers is in any case in doubt.

But all Zimbabweans need to look around and see that the new political landscape requires new responses. They have, like many voters around the world, voted with their emotions and their hearts, demonstrating their loyalties to the parties with which they have long identified, and to individuals whom they trusted to govern them. That is no longer a viable approach to voting. Zimbabweans must learn to think strategically. What vote is most likely to dislodge Robert Mugabe, to end the corrupt and despotic rule of ZANU PF?

A vote for Tsvangirai assumes that his party can win enough votes from ZANU PF to carry the day. Mutambara’s MDC has already declared for Makoni, and there are signs that much of Matabeleland will heed that call. Can Tsvangirai, with so many of his supporters outside the country, retain the rest of his traditional following, and gain a very large number of former ZANU PF voters? Or is Makoni more likely to draw support as a new, fresh face appealing to both disaffected former MDC and former ZANU PF voters, and representing the idea of co-operation rather than polarisation? A vote for Makoni will assume that Tsvangirai’s time has passed and he would not be able to attract enough of ZANU PF to gain large numbers. Zimbabweans have to consider these possibilities carefully, and vote for the one they think is most likely to oust Mugabe.

If this election is primarily about showing Robert Mugabe the door, the key question for voters is which of the two challengers is likely to succeed in drawing more votes.

But the second task is to choose which of the two is more likely to take us into re-building mode selflessly, with the interests of social justice for the people the main motivation. Again, both have baggage – Tsvangirai is dragged down by the self-interested squabbling within his party which begins to look more and more like ZANU-PF itself; their tendency to insult and denigrate other opposition forces instead of seeing them as allies in a common cause is not promising. Makoni will bring with him some ZANU PF loyalists who could not stand up to criticize their party’s evil doings, and others who have been direct beneficiaries of that evil.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/356/46869airball.jpgWhat will be needed will be strong leadership which can give the country a new vision of a united people, while curbing any excesses of their adherents. Zimbabwe needs someone who can reach across party lines and treat the sicknesses of hatred and greed, while ensuring that evil-doers do not escape with impunity. Each voter will have to ask himself, not which candidate gains his sympathy, but which candidate can do both jobs.
Political goals cannot be reached in a single leap. This election will not bring social justice in Zimbabwe. But there are critical achievements that can be made through this election:

- Remove Robert Mugabe from power and end his catastrophic rule.

- Put into power a government that can unite the people to embark on the tasks of restoring rule of law, rebuilding the economy, bringing justice not revenge, healing and dignity to Zimbabweans.

We would dream for the achievement of both, but even if only the first is attained we will have taken at least one step forward.

There is of course the possibility that even the first task will fail. But it is clear that there is a seismic shift in the Zimbabwean political scene which has to produce significant change. If it is prevented from coming through the ballot box, then we surely will face some very dark days in Zimbabwe. Many dangers lurk in the coming weeks, whoever is declared the winner. But progressive Zimbabweans must not give way to despair and assume that the election is already pre-determined against us. If we want change through the vote we must hope and believe and work to reach our goals. In spite of all the odds, if Zimbabweans are prepared to overcome fear, to cast aside emotional loyalties, to think and vote strategically, and to keep their eyes on the goals of peace and social justice, much is possible.

*Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean human rights activist.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

***Also read more of Mary Ndlovu's Zimbabwe analysis.
Blowing Away the Rhetorical Smokescreeens in Zimbabwe

A Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) summary of a report that looks at the suppression of women's political voices

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/356/46868woza.jpgWomen of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) launched a report detailing the political violence experienced by their members in Harare on Wednesday 19 March 2008 at an event attended by diplomats, civic society leaders and members of WOZA and MOZA. The report is entitled "The effects of fighting repression WITH LOVE".

The report is a result of research conducted by WOZA on what violations its members have gone through as women human rights defenders and who the perpetrators of these abuses are. The report was launched to make public the findings and to urgently draw attention to the risks faced by women activists as Zimbabwe braces itself for an election. It is intended that those who read the report will be motivated to take action to remedy the damage done to millions of people's lives by a violent dictatorship.

The meeting was chaired by WOZA's partners, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, who vocalised their praise for the detail in the report and for the need for the women human rights defenders to be respected and for there to be justice for the abuses. ZLHR Board member and lawyer, Sarudzai Njerere said, 'the report is an important tool in documenting what Zimbabweans have experienced' and that 'we should all join WOZA in standing up for social justice".

Prominent activist and WOZA trustee, Mary Ndlovu launched the report by giving a brief outline of its contents. She highlighted that it encompasses the police response to peaceful protests by WOZA; that the majority of women interviewed reported multiple human rights violations; that it is apparent that police would like to intimidate and deter women from participation and that the police are in violation of domestic and regional professional codes and are committing criminal law offences all of which call for punishment although none seems to be forthcoming due to a breakdown and partial way the justice system now operates.

She went on to point out that the Zimbabwean government officials who give order to beat or detain the human rights defenders render Zimbabwe in violation of its own constitution and in breach of obligations under international law.

Two WOZA members also gave testimonies of their experiences at the hands of the Uniformed Branch and Law and Order department of the ZRP. One woman in the company of her four-year-old daughter, testified about their arrest and detention in horrid conditions for three days in 2004, well over the 48hour detention period permitted under the Public Order and Security Act (POSA). Her daughter was only three months old at the time and she only had two nappies with her and had to fight to access water to wash them when they became soiled. When members of WOZA tried to send disposable nappies in for her baby, police officers misappropriated them and she never received them. Despite this and further arrests and beatings, she remains an active member of WOZA.

Another woman testified that she had been abducted from her home in Bulawayo with her 18-month-old grandchild at 4am by Law and Order officers. They threatened to kill her by throwing her and the child in a dam. She had also been seriously beaten across the breasts by police and had to undergo extended medical treatment. These testimonies are indicative of the experiences of peaceful activists and reflective of the physical and mental torture they undergo in fighting for their basic freedoms to be realised.

WOZA National Coordinator, Jenni Williams, outlined the recommendations highlighted in the report. She also went on to say that in the light of WOZA's recent experience in Bulawayo on the 8th March 2008, International Women's Day, where over 50 members were brutalised, just weeks before the upcoming 29 March election, a free and fair climate for elections does not exist.

The report calls on the Zimbabwean government to immediately end violence against its citizens and on the Zimbabwe Republic Police to honour their commitment to the Police Act and the SARPCCO Code of Conduct for police officers. It also calls on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to support human rights defenders rather than oppressive governments that deny people their domestically and internationally guaranteed rights and on the African Union (AU) to isolate representatives of the Zimbabwe government and any other government that fails to abide by its obligations under international law to respect human rights.

The international community was also called on to recognize the contribution of WOZA members as human rights defenders, and assist in the documentation and publicising of violations so that justice may be served in the future.

A further recommendation is for a Transitional Justice programme. The reports reads, "We call on Zimbabweans and non-Zimbabweans alike to assist in putting into place a mechanism which satisfies the wishes of the Zimbabwean people to see not retribution, but justice, truth and reconciliation, so that the guilty can do penance and the victims can feel healed of the many wounds they have suffered at the hands of state agents."

Whilst the report made mention of the trauma experienced by WOZA women as a result of their experiences, it was felt that the findings are significant enough to be released in a separate report due for release soon. What is clear however is that the women have experienced more trauma in an independent Zimbabwe than in pre-Independence period.

*To read the full report, please visit:

** Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines likely scenarios for Zimbabwe’s simultaneous presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. Even though President Robert Mugabe has two serious challengers, including for the first time one from within his own ruling party, he probably has the means to manipulate the process before, during and after balloting, sufficiently to keep his office, though possibly only after a violent run-off. If that happens, no government will emerge capable of ending the country’s long crisis.

The Centre of African Studies at SOAS has received a tremendous boost with a donation to fund an initiative on Governance for Development in Africa, which will create a dedicated environment to support Africans to study both the legal aspects of governance and the links between economic development and governance. The deadline to apply for entry in January 2009 is 30 September 2008

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites abstracts and proposals for paper presentation at the second international conference it is organising on development as part of its revamped Economic Policy Research Programme. The first conference within the framework of this initiative was convened in 2007. The theme of the 2008 conference is Re-thinking Trade and Industrial Policy for African Development.

At a meeting chaired by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon last week in New York, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Africa Steering Group made various recommendations on how to achieve the eight goals on the continent before 2015, the target year. Abimbola Akosile highlights arising issues for overall development

An electoral amendment, passed by Robert Mugabe on Monday, sparked renewed fears that Zanu PF is determined to rig the March 29 election. State radio announced Tuesday that Mugabe amended electoral laws to allow policemen into polling stations to ‘assist’ illiterate people to vote. The opposition immediately slammed the amendment saying it violated agreements reached at the SADC brokered talks. Policemen were barred from being within 100 metres of a polling station because it was felt they would intimidate voters.

Police in Harare have stopped the Combined Harare Residents Association from holding public meetings with the contesting election candidates in the capital. Mfundo Mlilo, spokesman for CHRA, said on Wednesday that the officer commanding Southerton police district had banned 16 of their planned ‘meet the candidate public meetings’ in all low and high-density suburbs south of the capital.

It appears that the policy of “quiet diplomacy” practiced by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki is about to be applied to the regional observer mission deployed to Zimbabwe. South African parliamentarians assigned to the SADC team that will be monitoring Zimbabwe’s elections have been ordered not to issue independent statements.

Over 75 000 members of the country’s security forces have already cast their votes, in an exercise that has been a closely guarded secret, according to information received by the MDC. In Bulawayo most police officers were allegedly forced to vote several times, while in Mutare soldiers were ordered to write their force numbers on the back of their ballot papers.

Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader has condemned plans to count presidential ballots centrally, saying this will help rig the 29 March election. "I will not be part of an illegal process," said Morgan Tsvangirai, who will be challenging president Robert Mugabe alongside Simba Makoni and demanded that all votes be counted at polling stations.

The United Nations refugee agency has begun moving some of the estimated 14,000 refugees who recently fled violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) away from the border in southern Chad to more accessible areas. Ron Redmond, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said a first group of nearly 700 people was transferred on Saturday from the border town of Maya to a temporary transit site 25 kilometres further inland, near the village of Dembo.

While the violence that swept across Kenya several months ago was triggered by disputed presidential polls, the crisis was fuelled by underlying causes including poverty and discrimination, United Nations human rights officials said today, urging greater accountability and an end to impunity to address those issues and prevent further outbreaks.

Over 60 per cent of Africans lack access to a proper toilet, according to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ahead of World Water Day – observed on 22 March – whose 2008 theme is “Sanitation Matters.” The Day aims to raise awareness to the plight of 2.6 billion people worldwide who live without toilets in their homes and are therefore vulnerable to numerous

Recent attacks by militias and the Sudanese army on four villages in West Darfur that left at least 115 people dead and some 30,000 displaced violated international humanitarian and human rights law, a United Nations report just released has found.

ICG warns that the international community needs to have contingency plans ready in anticipation of rigged elections in Zimbabwe on 29 March that could precipitate a potentially violent crisis

Zimbabwe: Prospects from a Flawed Election,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines likely scenarios for Zimbabwe’s simultaneous presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. Even though President Robert Mugabe has two serious challengers, including for the first time one from within his own ruling party, he probably has the means to manipulate the process before, during and after balloting, sufficiently to keep his office, though possibly only after a violent run-off. If that happens, no government will emerge capable of ending the country’s long crisis. “Zimbabweans desperately want change but have little faith these elections will produce it”, says François Grignon, Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director. “Even after the 29 March vote, a negotiated compromise will likely be essential to reverse a deteriorating political and economic situation but only the first step.”

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) mediation by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, which once offered the most realistic chance of resolving Zimbabwe’s eight-year crisis, has failed. Primary responsibility lies with Mugabe, who unilaterally called snap elections and ruled out passage before the polls of the new constitution. His ruling ZANU-PF party has subsequently been using all the extensive means at its disposal to maintain an unfair advantage in the campaign. The bitterly divided opposition must also share blame: it gained relevancy from the mediation but was unable to agree on an electoral strategy at a time of acute national crisis.

If the election leads to further confrontation, the African Union (AU) should be ready to promptly offer mediation for a power-sharing agreement to produce a transitional government with a reformist agenda. A settlement need not necessarily remove Mugabe. He might serve as a non-executive head of state during a transitional period in advance of fresh elections. The important point is for the region to be prepared to act quickly if the elections do not produce a legitimate government that can deal with a national crisis whose consequences are increasingly being felt beyond Zimbabwe’s borders. With South Africa and the SADC having lost some credibility, the AU needs to take the lead.

The wider international community must also be ready to provide concerted backing to AU-led mediation. The EU and U.S. have little appetite to re-engage with a ZANU-PF dominated government, but if that is the result of a genuinely negotiated agreement that aims at reconciliation and renewal, they should not hold back.

“If the region’s leaders were again to recognise an illegitimate government, Zimbabwe’s dramatic economic disintegration would continue, and the inevitable next round of the struggle over Mugabe’s succession could easily provoke bloodshed”, warns Andebrhan Giorgis, Crisis Group Senior Adviser.
Pretoria/Brussels, 20 March 2008

*Read the full Crisis Group report at: The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation covering some 60 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

** Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/355/46809obama.jpgIn a nuanced article that borrows from various disciplines such as philosophy and physics, Horace Campbell argues that Barrack Obama would only be trapped by a conservative and anti-people social and economic system if those "who are being drawn into the audacity of hope do not build their own political movement and political organization." He argues that only "only a bottom up movement can prevent Barack Obama from becoming a racial decoy for the Wall Street forces."

INTRODUCTION

The new force of the youth has now made itself felt in US presidential politics in 2008. This force is manifest in the tremendous outpouring of the collectivities of different races, classes, genders, sexual orientation and ages coming forward to support the candidacy of Barack Obama. Barack Obama was born of an African father from Kenya and a mother of European extraction from Kansas in the heartland of the United States. Obama is drawing on both heritages and is campaigning to make a break with the binary categories that perpetuates divisions and the politics of exclusion. This break is a fundamental concept in fractal theory and opens up questions of the laws of unintended consequences in politics. It is the combination of the new energy and light that emerges from the Barrack Obama campaign that sparks questions on the need for a new framework for analyzing politics. This is the framework based on truth, justice, peace and a new mode of politics. In South Africa, the term emerged to point to the ways that in which we share a common humanity.

This short statement will argue that after nearly thirty years of traditional republican and democratic politics there is a desire for hope. It is hope that goes beyond the audacity of the campaign of Obama or the kind of balancing which is inscribed in his book, The Audacity of Hope.

This hope cannot be quantified and this absence of quantification bears positive and negative possibilities. The positive possibilities can emerge from the intentionality of those forces who can build on the new self organizing tools for self emancipation and for moving the politics of this society to a new level. Without the involvement of a new constituency in politics, the Barack Obama campaign can only go so far to ignite the imagination of the youth but this fire will burn out if there are no self similar processes being developed in spaces of peace, spaces of hope and non racialized spaces.

Even if Obama were to be elected to be the President of the United States, the conditions/realities for the overwhelming majority of the citizens (especially blacks, browns, and First nation peoples) will not change overnight. The economic recession, the joblessness of millions and the massive military machine will expose whether this election discourse on change can be transformed into setting in motion a new mobilization of popular forces to struggle for a new mode of politics and economics. In the conclusion we will note that though Obama is no revolutionary, he is caught in a revolutionary moment and his message of hope has tapped into the desire for peace, reconstruction and justice…

Barack Obama is campaigning on the basis of change. In this campaign, his ideas may not be totally formed in relation to the fundamental questions facing the society, but what is clear is that his movement has tapped into a force, energy force that at this moment is unstoppable. The same youths who have grown up in the era of the information revolution and the platforms such as Face book/ My Space are using new social networking techniques that baffle the political pundits reared in the universities that taught the physics of Isaac Newton and the derivative mechanical concepts of Adam Smith and John Locke. Polling and the laws of predictability that emanate from this mechanical era has fallen short of grasping the new energy as thousands of new actors and actresses surge on to the stage of politics to identify with the break from the old politics of fear and so called War on Terror.

Millions are no longer deterred by the fear mongering of the Bush/Cheney leadership or the imagery of Islamic peoples as terrorists. Decent Christians are now seeking the gospel of peace and love instead of hate and religious fundamentalism.

UBUNTU AND THE AUDACITY OF HOPE

Barack Obama is opposed to the hierarchies of the whites over blacks and browns and uses his own life as a metaphor for calling on citizens to come together to save the planet earth. Obama has gone on record to register his opposition to the structured existence that places humans as atomized individuals without responsibility to family or society. Atomized individuals are open to manipulation by the media and are open to the Hobbesian thinking that society must be based on conflict and confrontation or ‘war of every man against every man.’ This manipulation is one form of psychological warfare against the citizens of the United States…

The idea of change that echoes from the Obama campaign has been calling for citizens to place themselves at the center and to empower themselves, firstly with their positive thinking, “Yes we can,” and more importantly by organizing to intervene in the political process. In response to this call, a cross section of the citizens of the United States from Iowa to Nebraska, from Idaho to Georgia and from Washington to Louisiana have come forward to seek the new ideas of twenty first century change. In the process there are new constituencies that have found their voice. This has led to a level of spontaneity that one could see in the muchwatched video- Yes we can.

Can the old media and the old ideas blunt the quantum leap in the consciousness of the youth that is taking place at the moment? This is the question that emerges from the discourse of the political talking heads on the same television stations that were enthusiastic cheer leaders for the illegal war against the peoples of Iraq.

These political commentators who were brought up to reproduce the misinformation of the media that tormented young people and led them into depression and isolation cannot fully understand the call of the Obama campaign to the youth that the change must begin in the youth themselves and that that have to believe in their capacity for change.

The political pundits of the mainstream media have been in the main brought up within the context of the hierarchies of Newtonian physics have been confounded by the bottom up, responsive, plural and holistic message of the Yes we can campaign.

These hierarchies have been at the base of the faulty democratic traditions of the United States that did not recognize native peoples as humans and rendered African Americans as three fifths of a human being. The same democratic tradition did not recognize women as citizens. Obama is not calling for this deformed reference to be the basis for change, he is exhorting all classes and all ages to be part of the solution, by drawing from a different tradition, the progressive traditions that sought to enrich and enlarge the meaning of democracy…

The unique experiences that Obama learnt when he was an organizer on the South Side of Chicago taught him the humility to listen to the ordinary person and it is this methodical organizing like the repetition of self similarity that one can discern in the organizational skills of Obama. The political victories in Idaho, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands and Missouri followed the scaling pattern of Obama that built up a profile in every district and in every part of the country so that he could not be pigeon-holed. After the land slide victory in South Carolina, Bill Clinton sought to compare Obama to Jesse Jackson and to limit his appeal to African Americans citizens. But the citizens of Washington State, Missouri, Louisiana and Maine voted with their heads and their hearts in response to new organizing thrust that is making the quantum leap in US politics a possibility. This leap has been reinforced by the nested loops of new social networks wired through the spaces of the information revolution.

After these victories the momentum began to build and citizens in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia signaled that they were another link in the chain of this momentous political intervention. Young people have organized themselves into new formations and have been energized by the promise that Obama would want to move in a new direction. In the past forty years the established parties benefited from the demobilization of the youth and unlike most liberal democratic states the numbers of citizens voting in the USA has been consistently below the numbers of other western democracies. Apathy and withdrawal from the system have been the outcome of the absence of realistic alternatives for the majority of the poor in the United States. This absence of participation by the youth has benefited the corporations and special interests to the point where there had been no incentive for the two parties to remove the restrictions that deter young people from participating in politics. The advent of Barack Obama is generating the long sought after alternative, hence the unprecedented turnout for the caucuses and primaries…

New experiences are being created in the midst of a new kind of political campaign that builds on these networks. The traditional media (newspapers, radio and Television stations) and the campaign of the Clintons have made clear statements about the organizational experience of the team around Hilary Clinton (Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton etc). Yet, it is this same experience rooted in the mechanistic hierarchies of Newtonian physics that is becoming the albatross of the political campaign of Hilary Clinton. Her experiences are very similar to the leader of the Republican Party, John McCain. John McCain is proud of his support for the wars against the peoples of Iraq and the merchants of death. Hilary Clinton has sought to demonstrate to the club of militarists that she would oil the war machinery while millions are without basic jobs.

Without fresh ideas when US citizens wanted a clean break with the militarism that brought the quagmire and fiasco in Iraq, Hilary Clinton could not understand that she had to tell the people that she was wrong in supporting the unjust war in Iraq. This is politics of truth that is now needed in the society. But from the position of Hilary Clinton on a possible military strike against Iran and more importantly, her base in the constituency of the financial speculators of New York State exposed the fact that thought she is campaigning to change conditions for women, she has not broken with the militarists of the society. Decency would require that Hilary Clinton rewrite her texts on her responses to war and genocide during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. In this campaign her character has emerged especially in the case of the primary in Florida. Hilary Clinton’s willingness to claim a victory in Florida when she had said she would not brought out her true character to all peoples, black and white, women and men…

The Obama campaign has been able to draw on the organizational capacities of those who want to turn truth into a political force so that the society can turn from war to peace. This is the basic force behind the momentum of Barrack Obama and his experiences of Chicago has been able to translate this (peace thrust) in order to build up the electoral profile, bringing new teams in every part of the country and creating new training spaces for the energetic to donate, participate and learn the possibilities for change. Yet, because of the limitations of the electoral system that mitigates against direct participation of the citizen beyond voting, it is urgent that those who have understood the need for a new politics build new organizations at new sites of politics.

This new urgency is especially the case in the peace movement that has been unable to build on to the aspirations of the masses of the people for justice. Five years after the illegal occupation of Iraq, the activists for peace yearn for new forms of expression and hence there is a slow learning curve that demonstrations without follow up will only frustrate those who want new organizations. In 2003 at the start of the war against the peoples of Iraq there were millions of peoples on the streets.

Yet the established leadership of the peace movement was not able to take the question of the illegal war to the court of international opinion to that the immorality of the war could be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague…

Momentum means that when a person or object is moving, regardless of what it is - the harder it is to stop that person or object. When one consider "momentum" in terms of politics, this means that if a presidential candidate, such as Obama, sees and/or experiences a gain and/or surge in his message of peace, hope and change with millions singing, Yes we can, there could be nothing, not even bullets that can intervene in this momentum. This is the basis for a possible quantum leap in US politics to bring a new mode of politics for the 21st Century.

Obama is not a revolutionary but he has been caught up in a revolutionary moment in world history. The electoral campaign of Obama is riding on a wave of peace and change desired by ordinary Americans. There are limitations to the electoral project insofar as the task of restructuring US society is a gigantic one that cannot be done overnight. Obama may not be the solution, but is a small step in the direction of making the break with the old binary conceptions that dominated enlightenment thinking. It is the laws of unintended consequences that will emanate from this break that can lead to a new direction with the new positive bottom up organizing for transformation to a democratic society where all can live in peace.

A clear understanding of the nature of US politics and limitation of the structures of the in-built conservativsim of the system means that Barrack Obama would only be trapped by this social system if those who are being drawn into the audacity of hope do not build their own political movement and political organization. It is only a bottom up movement hat can prevent Barack Obama from becoming a racial decoy for the Wall Street forces. Self mobilization, self organization and emancipatory ideas will create new spaces so that the political space will be expanded beyond the media, the lobbyists and the ritual spaces of the White House, Congress and the Senate Chambers. Safe and clean neighborhoods, children who are reared to respect all human beings and a society that support repair of the planet earth awaits these new self organizing forces.

The campaign of Barack Obama is the story of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. These are the people who are participating because they believe that politics can mean something again. It is apt to conclude with the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism.”

* Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.

** Extracted by the author from "Barack Obama, Fractals And Momentum In Politics”

*** Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

For those wishing to watch/listen to Obama's speech, you can do so at:

Paul T. Zeleza while recognizing the historic nature and importance of the Obama speech argues that the circumstances that made the speech necessary reveal the extent to which the United States remains an arrogantly racist society

It finally came out, the predictable ogre of race and racism that has been stalking the US 2008 elections ever since Senator Barack Obama declared his candidacy and became a serious contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination following a string of overwhelming victories in the bulk of the 40 primaries and caucuses that have been held thus far.

For more than a week the gullible media and giddy pundits have deliriously played and pontificated on speciously spliced and decontextualized sermons from Senator Obama's former pastor, the recently retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the Illinois Senator has tried to douse the manufactured flames.

In the end Senator Obama was compelled to give a much anticipated speech, a defining speech of his candidacy according to many of the white pundits who hog the media. And it is being called a great speech, delivered with brilliant calmness and inspiring courage. Many already regard it as historic in its searing honesty, eloquence, and fearlessness in addressing America's original and enduring sin of racism and its bitter fruits of anger and resentment among blacks and whites. I was deeply moved by this exceptionally well-crafted speech in ways that I am usually not by political speeches with their predictable banality, although I was troubled by the gratuitous obeisance to Israel and the quetionable moral equivalence of centuries old white anti-black racism and decades old white anti-black resentment.

As perhaps only a person of his complex biography could, he may have forced the nation to face up to, have a conversation about, its ugly racial past if it seeks to forge a brighter post-racial future. Senator Obama is not only biracial, but also the offspring of a recent African immigrant and an old European immigrant. Unlike many biracials of African American origin, he has no ancestry among the enslaved Africans. So he simultaneously has his feet in the intimate solitudes of the black and white worlds, of the old and recent immigrants, of Africans and Europeans who have created this complex, troubled, and fascinating country. He is a transnational biracial, a member of the new African diaspora with peculiar insights into America's racial soul and position in the world.

Only the future will tell what impact the speech itself will have on America's tortured silences and stilted conversations on race and the trajectory of Senator Obama's own candidacy. What is clear, however, is that the very fact that Senator Obama, not the white candidates, not Senator Clinton or Senator McCain, was required to address the issue of race is a disheartening testimony to the racism of America's racial discourse. Much as Africa is carelessly homogenized, stripped of the splendid diversities of its countries, conditions and contexts, and Europe is carefully differentiated, blacks in America often bear the homogenizing burdens of their race in a way the presumably unraced whites rarely do. Also, the same insidious Euroamerican racial ideologies that cast doubts on the full humanity of Africans on the continent, questions the full citizenship of African Americans in the diaspora. This partly explains why Senator Obama became answerable for Rev. Wright, for his patriotism, for his Americanness.

The racialized burden of race is also expressed in the very expectation of blacks and biracials to speak out on race, to be experts on race, to own race, to be raced in a way whites routinely are not. Typically in American public discourse, black commentators are often confined to racial commentary; rarely are they called upon to voice their opinions on the burning public issues of the day from the state of the domestic economy and international finance to foreign policy and war to pressing technological, health, and environmental matters, except where black people are victims or perpetrators. Even in this election, as James Thindwa has noted on The Zeleza Post, black commentators are notable for their limited presence among the chattering media pundits.

In this context, Senator Obama's race speech, notwithstanding its seminal significance and intervention in American racial discourse, falls into a predictable pattern. It demonstrates white America's failure to come to term with race and racism, that the enslaved Africans who were forced to come to these shores did not create racism, and their descendants do not benefit from it, and still do not, by and large, control the material and ideological apparatuses that sustain and reproduce it, that indeed the black identity imposed on, and adopted by, by a transnational biracial individual such as Senator Obama is the result of a long history of Euroamerican racialization and racism.

American can only transcend the cruel legacies of race and racism when blacks no longer bear the burden of speaking out on race and racism, when whites bear their own historic racial crosses. The fact that Senator Obama was forced to repudiate and explain his former pastor, reveal the vibrant and secluded world of the black church with its complex social gospel that is hidden from whites during Christian America's most segregated Sunday morning, and remind his nation of its imperfect union, shows America has a long way to go to build a more convivial multiracial, let alone, postracial nation worthy of all its citizens and the world's respect.

* Paul T Zeleza is editor of The Zeleza Post. This article was first published at

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

What happens when white feminism intersects with questions or race and class? How has Race and Gender being used to derail the Obama campaign? Linda Burham tackles these questions and much more

The Clinton campaign can do all the distancing it wants from Geraldine Ferraro’s chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome, but this is not the first time Obama has been cast as the beneficiary of affirmative action.

Here’s Erica Jong, more than a month ago, on the same issue. After allowing that “Obama is smart and attractive. Maybe he’ll be president some day,” she goes on to say: “Obama is also a token – of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension.”

Right now, black female voter that I am, I’m most definitely understanding the condescension – and righteous indignation – of white liberal feminists who believe Obama skipped ahead of them in line. I’m also understanding the sheer frustration of women who were headed towards an easy coronation, but then got sideswiped and stalled by an upstart prince.

It appears that all the mainstream, high-profile feminists got the same talking-points memo from the Clinton campaign. Ferraro, pit bull that she is, was just a little more raw in her delivery. If you didn’t get the memo, here are the talking points.

- Though the Democrats are blessed with an embarrassment of riches, with a black man and a woman contending for the nomination, Clinton is unequivocally the only one prepared for the rigors of the presidency.

- Obama is all fluff, no substance, glib and attractive, but also a cocksure, ageist upstart.

- Given the depths of Obama’s inexperience, his present popularity can only be explained by the reverse discrimination effect: he’s unfairly benefiting from his status as a black man.

- Older white women are supporting Clinton because they recognize bottom-line competence, know how to vote in their own best interests, grow more radical with age, and are ready to make history.

- White men are supporting Obama because of their latent or blatant sexism. They’re confused by the unfamiliar choices presented them, and more freaked out by the prospect of a woman in the White House than they are by the prospect of the first African American president.

- Maybe Obama will be a candidate to consider once he’s more politically seasoned, i.e., after eight years of Clinton.

- Sexism is the most pervasive and persistent form of discrimination.

- Racism is on the run, nearly vanquished save a few remnants.

From Gloria Steinem to Robin Morgan to Geraldine Ferraro to Erica Jong, they’re all playing the same tune. Now we can’t blame the women for fighting hard for their candidate, but it is disappointing, to say the very least, that in heralding Clinton as the proper choice for every feminist and all women they have also managed to dredge up some of the least attractive features of liberal feminism.

For nearly forty years feminists have wrangled over how to integrate issues of race, class, sexual orientation and other markers of inequality into a coherent, powerful gender analysis. Women of color insist on the complex relationship between racism and sexism and the central significance of racism in the lives of people of color. White feminists nod their heads, “Yes, of course, we understand, we’re with you on that.” Then comes the crunch, when the content of your feminism actually matters – as it does in this campaign – and they revert to the primacy of sexism over all other forms of discrimination and oppression. All the tendencies that got feminism tagged as a white, middle-class women’s thing are, brutally, back in play.

There’s a lot of twisting and turning going on in the effort to explain Obama’s viability. If he’s so completely inexperienced, why are people coming out to vote for him in record numbers? Must be that racism is dead but sexism isn’t. Must be that he’s an affirmative action baby. Must be that people are mesmerized, charmed and bewitched by his silver tongue. Must be that people are voting with their hearts for hope instead of with their heads for hard-headed competence.

In fact, it must be anything except that he’s knit together a coalition the existence of which most political actors could not have predicted, much less activated. Except that his politics and presentation of self have motivated millions of new voters and re-energized previously disaffected millions more in ways that her politics and presentation of self have not. Except that voters have weighed his experience and hers and concluded that she’s not bringing appreciably more to the table than he is. Except that she’s pegged her vaunted experience to her White House years and a fair share of voters (raise your hands y’all) were not enthralled with the policies of the Clinton presidency.

It’s just not such a terribly long walk from the Clinton campaign’s insistence on Obama’s lack of experience and complete unreadiness to lead to the notion that he’s gotten as far as he has not on his own merits, but as a result of the workings of some pro-brother bias. That is, to put it baldly, the playing field is tilted in favor of the minority candidate who, despite his thin resume, has managed to leapfrog over the more qualified white candidate. There’s a reason this reminds you of every reverse discrimination complainant from Allan Bakke forward. It undermines the legitimacy of affirmative remedies for identifiable, quantifiable discriminatory practices while simultaneously denigrating the qualifications of people of color in high places, whether they got there by means of affirmative action or not.

Then there’s the basic categorical confusion. Let’s go back to that historic juncture, wherein a black man and a woman are close contenders for their party’s nomination. If his race is noteworthy, Obama the black man (regardless of how many ways his blackness has been interpreted), then so too is hers. [For those of you who believe we’re living in a post-racialist society, if you haven’t tuned out already, you’ll probably want to skip the rest of this piece.] This is a contest between a black man and a white woman. Voters orient themselves toward Obama along a broad spectrum of racial attitudes ranging from, “Of course I’m voting for the brother” to “I’d never in a million years cast my vote for an African American.” And everything in between.

The point is, most sane people recognize that Obama’s race matters. Well then, how is it that Clinton’s doesn’t? If Obama’s blackness is a positive incentive for some voters, a liability for others and a source of confusion and ambivalence for still others, how is it that Clinton’s whiteness is a big fat neutral. Is it not at least theoretically possible that some voters are positively inclined toward Clinton because she is white?

There is a brand of feminism, amply critiqued but still very much alive, that focuses on gender bias while consistently downplaying the salience of race. And the easiest way to avoid acknowledging that whiteness comes with its privileges is to avoid acknowledging it at all. Whiteness as default, normative, unworthy of note. Clinton the woman; Obama the black man. In fact, Obama as doubly favored, as a man and, with reverse discrimination and tokenism in play, as an African American. Clinton, meanwhile, is hobbled by her gender and, since her whiteness is unacknowledged, neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by her race. This is the topsy-turvy world we’re being asked to accept as reality.

I, for one, am going to take a pass on delusion. In Mississippi, though Obama took the state, 70 percent of white Democatic voters chose Clinton over Obama. In South Carolina, Obama took over 75 percent of the black vote but only 15 percent of the over-60 white vote, with similar results in Alabama. Isn’t is possible that at least some of those white voters would prefer to see a white person in the White House, regardless of gender, than an African American? And isn’t it possible that whiteness is an element of Clinton’s appeal in Ohio, Texas and, potentially, Pennsylvania, states in which Reagan Democrats (and Nixon Democrats before them) were won over to the Republican Party, at least in part, on the basis of frankly racist appeals? As long as Clinton’s whiteness is unacknowledged, so too are the dynamics that work to her advantage in this campaign.

The deep disappointment in the voting behavior of Obama-supporting men (read white men; see above) while officially chalked up to misogyny, has, in the argument of some feminists, crept uncomfortably close to a howl of anger at racial betrayal. In a Chicago Tribune article entitled “Sexism, not Racism, Thriving,” a clearly frustrated Frida Ghitis claims “We may be winning the war against racism, but sexism is putting up quite a fight….Women are voting for Clinton and blacks are voting for Obama…. If we look for someone who looks like us, for whom should a white man vote?... White men are giving their vote to Obama over Clinton [i].”

Let us grant without argument that many men, and a good number of women as well, would prefer to see a man in the White House than a woman. Is this evidence that sexism is alive and well? Indeed it is. But, as our own political processes constantly remind us, voting behavior is more than a little complex. Perhaps white men should be excoriated for their persistent sexism; perhaps we should be celebrating their transcendence of a century’s-long resistance to placing African Americans, men or women, in positions of power.

Would it be better, and for whom, if white men were to line up with white women and, as the saying goes, “vote their race?” Could this be what liberal feminists are advocating? Is Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the house?

It ought to be possible to point to the prevalence of sexism and misogyny, and their impact on Clinton’s campaign, without downplaying the longstanding, ongoing, pervasive impact of racism in the U.S. But this is not the path they have chosen. In order to bolster their case for Clinton’s relative disadvantage in the primary campaign, explain the white male vote in places like Iowa, Virginia, and Utah, and encourage white women to seize the historic moment, they impose a ranking order between racism and sexism, with sexism at the top, and insist on the declining significance of race.

Gloria Steinem: “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life…. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women [ii].”

Those of us who witnessed the response to Hurricane Katrina; who check in occasionally on the racial demographics of the incarcerated; who are aware of the racial divide in income and, more significantly, wealth; who recognize that the public schools grow ever more segregated while the push-out rate for Black and Latino students rises ever higher; who track the relative scarcity of African Americans in professional schools, as well as in a whole range of professions; who know that the infant mortality rate for black babies outstrips the rate for white babies by two to one; who watch the dynamics of gentrification, dislocation and homelessness – we are not convinced that racism is an insignificant remnant. And we’re hard pressed to understand why this argument should be any more tolerated when it comes from liberal feminists than when it comes from the more frankly racist right wing. Since I’m not running for president I can be blunt. The denial of the significance of racism is a deep and abiding form of the thing itself.

Much has been made of the gender tightrope Clinton must walk. She can’t seem too soft or too hard. She has to look attractive and expect that her hairdo, pantsuits, cleavage and ankles are all fair game for commentary. Tears will be relentlessly analyzed. She will be judged in ways that men never are. All of this is true, and an indication of how very far we have to go.

But, interestingly, Clinton can and does directly associate her campaign with a potential blow against gender discrimination. Obama cannot do the same with regard to race. Clinton regularly posits winning the presidency, breaking through that highest and hardest glass ceiling, as she puts it, as an historic win for women, more than 50 percent of the population.

Obama, meanwhile, does not have the latitude to explicitly associate his campaign with the interests of African Americans or an anti-racist agenda. Part of this is simply about the numbers. But there’s much more at work here. While Clinton has been walking her tightrope, Obama has been busy threading the very narrowest of needles. There may be dozens of ways for a white man to campaign for the presidency and, if our common history, both recent and remote, is any guide, just about any kind of white man can become president, as long as he has the cash and the connections.

Not so for the black man. At issue are not only his politics and his campaign craft, but also, crucially, how he inhabits his black manhood. (Now, up until a few months ago I couldn’t have imagined that there was any way for a Black man to become a serious contender – to thread the needle – so we’re all learning as we go here.) White folks, in general, don’t want to see any chips on the shoulders or any psychic scars on the soul. There isn’t a black male in America over the age of 10 who doesn’t have a few chips and scars, but letting them show is a major deal breaker in the halls of power. So props to Obama for a fine acting job.

There’s a bargain that white voters have struck with Obama, and here, in brief, is what it is:

“You can be black, and we’re happy to congratulate ourselves on voting for a black man, as long as you’re black in a way that doesn’t upset us, scare us, make us feel guilty, or make us feel too white.” Obama is holding up his side of the bargain, either because he’s temperamentally inclined to do so or because he’s carefully calculated what it takes to win over white voters, or some combination of the two. But the quality of his blackness is nonetheless an issue. This is the meaning of the insistence that Obama distance himself from his pastor, Reverend Wright, and from Minister Farrakhan. Way too many chips and scars. Way too little regard for what white folks think. And way too much attachment to the African American community. So, if Obama himself can’t be tagged as too black for prime time, maybe he’s too black by association.

Further, while Obama has assiduously courted the black vote, he hasn’t done so with an explicitly anti-racist message and he certainly hasn’t posited the African-American community as the core of his coalition. Why? Because to do so would sink his campaign like a hundred weight stone. This, in part, is the difference between the Jackson campaign, which built a disruptive, progressive coalition with Black voters and anti-racist politics at its core, and Obama’s liberal coalition that is inclusive of and reliant upon black voters without centralizing their concerns in a way that would scare off white voters. Jackson ran as a direct challenge to the status quo, implementing an inside-outside strategy without the burden of expecting a win. Obama’s first principle is viability, and he threads his needle accordingly.

It’s more than a little interesting that liberal feminists, so highly attuned to the ways in which gender frames how Clinton can run, are blissfully (willfully?) ignorant of how race and racism shape the Obama campaign. Black racial solidarity still reads as a threat in a way that gender solidarity does not.

One last talking point before we close: the voting behavior of white women. Every national election cycle we’re treated to lots of commentary about the gender gap and its meaning. More eligible women vote than do eligible men and women are somewhat more likely to cast their votes for Democrats than for Republicans. Clinton is undeniably running strongly among white women Democrats, especially those over the age of 50. Should we be reading this as further evidence that the older women voters get, the more radical they become, as Morgan and Steinem contend? [Steinem: “Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.” Robin Morgan: “Older women are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age…”]

The two party lockdown ensures that there’s no real way to register radicalism in presidential primaries or national elections. So let’s assume that those voting Democratic are somewhat more radical than those voting Republican. In the 2004 presidential election 55 percent of white women gave their votes to George W. Bush; 62 percent of white men did the same. A significant gender gap.

Meanwhile, 90 percent of African American women and a slightly smaller proportion of African American men voted for John Kerry. In the 2000 presidential election an astounding 94 percent of African American women voted Democratic. I can’t do the math, but I suspect that if you were to subtract the overwhelmingly Democratic votes of African American women the gender gap would narrow considerably.

Younger voters from 18-29 years old cast 54 percent of their votes for the Democratic candidate in 2004. Exactly the same percentage of voters 60 and over cast them for Bush.

I just don’t see the evidence that older white women constitute a hotbed of radicalism, or even consistent liberalism. Had they followed the lead of African American women in 2000 and 2004 we all would have been spared a whole lot of grief.

Liberal feminists have every right to spend down their political capital on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hard choices have to made; political debts have to be paid. But it will not count as progress if a Clinton win is purchased at the cost of deepening the racial divide. It is inexcusable to support a candidate in the name of feminism while deploying racist argumentation, minimizing the existence and impact of racism, and denying the advantages of inhabiting the racial space called “white.” It will not be excused. Nor will it be forgotten.

*Linda Burnham is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Women of Color Resource Center.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org