http://www.misna.org/news.asp?lng=1&id=122656Bush’s re-election ‘sad day for Africa’”: this is the headline of the on-line edition of the prestigious Johannesburg weekly ‘Mail & Guardian’. Pending the definitive results of yesterday’s poll, in which incumbent President George W. Bush however looks to have won a second term, the paper has canvassed reactions from South Africans, most of whom were hoping for a change at the White House. “I have been keeping my fingers crossed that the American people will see some light, finally,” Amina Cachalia, a prominent anti-apartheid activist, told the paper. “The world’s most powerful country is getting back a man who refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, unsigned America’s membership to the International Criminal Court and seriously undermined the United Nations” is the comment from Kevin Malunga, a lecturer of law at Johannesburg’s Witswatersrand University. “No matter who emerges as the victor, what the world needs now is a man who can end the madness in Iraq without force,” Simangele Sekgobela, deputy chief economist of South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation, cut in. The lively debate in the South African media does not find an echo elsewhere on the continent. ‘Wal Fadiri’, a daily newspaper in Senegal, points out that voter turn-out reached unprecedented levels in America; in an editorial article published today, the Dakar newspaper writes that “except for the Russians, the Poles and the Israelis, world public opinion rejects the outgoing president” George W. Bush. The pro-government newspaper of Kampala (Uganda) is more cautious, limiting itself to saying that the final outcome is “unpredictable”. From Ethiopia, the weekly newspaper ‘Addis Tribune’ recalls that “Kerry’s vision and strategy fully answer the needs and the demands of the Ethiopian community in the United States”, claiming that immigrants from the Horn of Africa country gave their vote to the Democrat candidate, as most African-Americans and Hispanics seem to have done. The Kenyan press has expressed its joy at the election to the Senate of the Democrat Barack (meaning ‘blessed’) Obama, who was born in Hawaii of a white American mother and a Kenyan father. The on-line edition of the ‘Daily Nation’ – Nairobi’s leading daily – offers updates on this small but symbolic victory for Africa, and in a broader sense for the world’s South, which will take up its place – vicariously – in Congress in Washington.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
