O, Barack Obama!
O, Barack Obama!Written by Dr Kenneth D. Kaunda
Sunday, November 09, 2008 6:37:27 PM
God, what a wonderful Creator you are Lord!
You have done it! You have done it again!
Barack Obama. He is on 20th January 2009 being sworn in the 44th President of the United States of America. A digression Lord, what a coincidence! We are also 44 years old as a country.
President-elect Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan father and an Irish mother from America. You do great things Lord. The Irish are also freedom fighters. Lord, you gave Barack Obama a mother from the Irish nation, born in America.
Who doesn’t know Lord how much at the hands of other people the blacks have suffered. Slaves came from the continent of Africa, taking them to other continents. There to slave and labour for other countries.
On the continent of Africa it self, where millions of our people were drawn from, colonialism followed slavery. Apartheid followed slavery. How great you are Lord. In the Middle East, Lord you brought to earth your only son, Lord your only begotten son, Jesus Christ, through a nation call Israel. Indeed, it could only be through your only begotten son that you taught us to “Love God your Creator with all your Heart, with all your Soul, with all your Mind, with all your Strength”, this is how you taught us to relate to you our Creator.
The greatest commandment indeed, the greatest commandment, is to relate to one another, as you taught us, Lord, “Love your neighbour as you Love yourself, but Lord how could we love our neighbours as ourselves if we do not, “do unto others as we would have them do unto us”. The greatest of all commandments are sealed here. This holy teaching of love is across anything artificial. How great, Lord, this is! It is across ethnic barriers. It is across colour. It is across even faith. It comes from you Lord. So from the desert sands of Israel, your only begotten son, the only one taught these commandments. If you obey these, how can you steal from your neighbour? How can you kill anyone? This is how Lord you guided us. However, these things are still happening in all parts of this our one world.
Back Lord to the wonderful story of Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States of America. It is the black people of that great country who have over hundreds of years, laboured to build the USA. The slave trade was really a cruel system. The story of the suffering of the black people has been told to this world over a long time. They have struggled and suffered in many forms. They could not attend schools, hospitals, they could not even travel in same buses, same trains as their white brothers and sisters, segregation was total. What a story! What a dark chapter in history. But Lord God Almighty, this is still happening in many different parts of this our one world. Differences and struggles between tribes. Differences and struggles between races. Differences and struggles even between and within faiths.
What do I mean? Look at the differences between Christians in Northern Ireland with Catholics and Protestants. They fought bitter wars, killing one other because this one was Catholic and the other was Protestant and this one was Protestant and the other one was Catholic. Thank you, Lord, the leadership of Tony Blair in England and his brother Irish Prime Minister, in Ireland. This has been more or less settled.
Lord we look at the Middle East, here our bothers and sisters, the Sunnis and Shiites, the fighting is real. Some Sunnis and Shiites refuse to be brothers and sisters in Islam. Fighting and killing continues. When Lord are we going to accept one other as your worshippers? Lord we are confident that what you have done for America is a wonderful example of what this world is being prepared for. I have referred to slave trade in America and all the terrible things that happened between blacks and whites.
But I must also refer to discrimination between men and women. Discrimination against women is in all parts of the world, for instance, when in the early 1920s mothers in America fought for their right to vote.
In Zambia, for example, we have been voting properly in the last 44 years. This is the same in many parts of this continent of Africa, where there are struggles of any type between human beings like Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia and many other parts of the continent of Africa. Many parts of Asia. Many parts of America. This discrimination in one form or another continues. Yes, inspite of what America has gone through, that great son of America had seen it. I am referring to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, ‘I have a dream’.
Look at the recent tears of Rev Jesse Jackson. Those tears told the story. He was one of those with Martin Luther King Jr. that fought discrimination in many forms, including the right to vote. Now the tide has changed. The tide has come. Barack Obama, a black person is to become the 44th President of the United States of America. What does this mean. We do not expect, or should I say no one should expect miracles, no one should expect miracles simply because one black man is a Head of State of a Continent Country.
First and foremost, let us remember that the economy of the USA and that of Europe have gone down very badly indeed. This is bound to affect or indeed is bound to adversely impact on us. See how much it has impacted on Japan, India, and indeed the greatest economy of Europe, Germany. Britain has been affected. It will take a long time and a lot of effort to rebuild the USA economy.
However, one very important observation I should make is that a new America is born to us. Why do I say this? I have followed with a keen interest Presidential campaigns in America for a long time. I do not remember anyone that was so vigorously fought. Both candidates, the Democrat and the Republican fought vigorously and persistently articulated their vision for the country.
Almost each and every rally addressed by Barack Obama had many, many thousands of white youths, who were genuinely cheering him. This is a big change in the political structure of that great country. The white youth were out there, the black youth were out there and the latino youth were out there they were cheering together. I thought this was really a good thing and good development.
Barack Obama inspired the youth in that campaign. It should be remembered that even black voters in the past have not come out in these great numbers. White voters knew the few of their brothers and sisters who voted where protecting their rights by those votes. The black voters did not worry to vote because they didn’t see any good reason for them to participate in this way when very little was going to happen in their favour. The appearance of this vigorous black intellect on the scene steered up the qualified black voter.
Fortunately, not only for America, but for all of us, as I have mentioned already, the youth, simply the youth, black and white, were attracted by this handsome looking young black American. His message meant a lot to all the young American people. It gave them hope. This was specially so because the bad tidings about the American economy came to the fore just a few months before elections. I was personally delighted that both Clintons joined in that campaign. That face of his which shows a lot of honest of purpose as he went round. At 47, an alert lawyer of substance, handsome looking, attracting men and women of colour, delivering messages of great importance to the American people. We could expect nothing else excerpt what we got, total success.
The last point is, there is a lot of worry in my heart to this great success. This young leader who has exposed such high qualities, will obviously lead USA and the rest of the world. To conclude, Barack Obama will produce great things for their good both in America as well as in those other parts of the world.
Indeed what he himself has said at times will continue to make people expect of him to produce miracles for their good. For example look at what he said at that huge rally, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer”.
Powerful as this message was, he was quick to add to this, “even as we celebrate tonight, we know what challenges tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our life time, two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in the century. He continued to say the road ahead would be long. “Our climb will be steep”, But America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.”
From this we can see clearly that Barack Obama understands very well what problems he faces. Let us hope and pray that he can handle those terrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in such a way that they will not continue to be there to drain his economy as well as those of his partners. He needs to find a way of ending those wars for the good of the American people themselves as well as for the good of all those others who have been participating in those fights at the invitation of President George W. Bush and his colleagues, like Tony Blair.
Yes, there is also the economic tragedy facing our one world today. He has to find ways and means of putting that right in the USA itself and indeed he must find ways of working with Europe, Japan, India and indeed, China. Only then can we expect a quick recovery from this crisis.
May I end by quoting a paragraph from The African Bible,
Psalms 72, headed: A King According to God
of Solomon:
“O God, give your judgement to the king;
your justice to the son of kings;
That he may govern your people with justice,
your oppressed with right judgement,
That the mountains may yield their bounty for the people, and the hills great abundance,
That he may defend the oppressed among the people,
save the poor and crush the oppressor.”
With this prayer from the African Bible, I leave my young brother, President Barack Obama in the only safe hands – God’s hands. Amen.
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, KENNETH KAUNDA
posted by MrK @ 6:38 PM
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