Open Letter to Barack Obama
Dear Mr Obama,
Your election as the first President of the United States of America of African ancestry aroused immeasurable passions among the great multitude in our continent and around the world.
The forlorn hope was premised on the retrospectively foolish idea that because your forbearers were of those who had been dehumanized, hunted, captured, brutalized and ‘civilized' throughout history, your leadership of the sole hyper-power on the planet would usher a period of decency, respect of human life, justice and peace.
Listening to your ‘Hopey' enunciations, our people believed that the God of the dispossessed, tyrannized and abandoned had at last heard their raw and enduring prayers and had raised a son of their seed to redeem their humanity and medicate their future.
On the 27th of November 2008, the day of your election, we cried and danced in the slums of Nairobi, the barrios of Caracas, ghettos of Detroit, gutters of Khayelitsha, hell zones of Cite Soleil, the brutally occupied territories of Palestine, in Manshiet Nasser of Cairo, in the shanty towns of Mumbai, the Al Qaryahs of Bayda, and in the many wastelands around the globe.