Africa’s Cup runneth over!

For too long, the world has taken away from Africa. Now, the world is coming back, on Africa’s terms.

Madiba’s image – his calm, strong face – gazes across Soccer City, Soweto, where the soaring voices of tenors stretch to the rafters, packed with fans, and where the dancers on the pitch wave colourful kente cloths frame the shape of a fabulous continent. This is the Football World Cup 2010. This is South Africa. My God, this is Africa. It can do it, and do it great.

I’m with them every step of the way. Even though I’m sat here, at a battered dining table, in my cold flat in Aarhus, and outside the rain has fallen incessantly for three days, I’m watching and my hopes and joys are squarely on the continent. Not so much the mother continent as a mother-by-adoption. As we might say in Africa: I am a brother, by a different mother.

Many say that South Africa is not Africa. But let’s leave that aside just this once, and pray that the Rainbow Nation’s coming out party is its best so far. Better still to come, I pray. And watching the opening ceremony, it’s pretty clear: all the colours of the rainbow, and one added, the most prominent – BLACK – are here. The naysayers can go hang. The cynics may quit now, the skeptics hold their tongues until later. The ghosts of the past – colonialism, slavery, wars, tribalism, disease, drought- are slowly being exorcised. This is the biggest stage the world can conjure, and this time, it’s being conjured in Africa.

Nkosi Sikelel’i Africa. God bless you Africa.

Crude noises: Obama’s deepwater blowout

Now, whose ass am I gonna kick?

Perhaps within the next 2 years – before the next US election-  we will look back to June 2010, and say, “That’s where Obama lost it.”

There is a lot on the President’s plate these days: oil spill, health care, Iraq, Afghanistan, off-shore drilling, property bubbles, unemployment, Guantanamo, financial crises, Greek crises, falling support for Democrats, the rising Tea Party types. A long list, topped by oil and the economy. In a sense, the two are synonymous and are unlikely to change soon. So why is Obama playing every populist card up his sleeve while crude washes up on America’s southern shores?

He has come down hard on BP – they deserve it. With a recent track record of ignoring safety measures, the Deepwater Horizon explosion was perhaps, just waiting to happen. Obama has said he is looking for ‘ass to kick’. Great, he needs to do that, say that, and be seen to be saying and doing it. But really, whose ass? Not just BP, for sure, but the four other American contractors including the Halliburton home-boys who have quietly slipped under the radar as Obama rails against those pesky, toffish, buck-toothed Brits who simply can’t run a rig. Never mind BP is a massive oil company with decades of experince, and a track record for corporate nastiness and untransparency. For those two last reasons, let BP pay, heavily for its rotten management of the crisis.

The blast is said to be an accident. But ultimately, it was Obama’s legislators who okayed off-shore oil drilling. Obama himself hurt millions of supporters, who voted him in on a green ticket, by rubber-stamping the expansion of off-shore drilling. Sure he has now ordered a 6-month moratorium. Oh, great! Six months? And after all that talk about “reducing our dependency on dirty, imported crude”? Utter window-dressing. And now saying BP has to pay salaries of those poor sods laid-off work thanks to the moratorium. Utterly absurd. A man as intelligent as Obama, with the kind of understanding he has of Wall Street and global finance, cannot honestly think this is possible or even legal. And he is an elite lawyer. So why even say it?

Media pundits have decried the move as ‘populist’. Yes, it is. It’s nationalist, it’s also quite reflective of his frustration and impotence. That leak is not plugged, his electorate is furious and he is seen to be ineffective. Worse, he is seen as aloof and stand-offish. However untrue these maybe, he can’t win. this is a natural disaster. Blasting BP, calling for its dividend payment o be withheld, calling for it pay for the cleanup and those fairytale wages, are all signs of anger, but also, fear, that this situation is out of hand.

However, most of these demands are probably illegal. How will the US stop the dividend payout of a UK company? What of the fact that 40% of BP stock is held by Americans: will they not want their dividends? And the US saying it will “not spend a penny” on the clean-up: what message does that send to the people at the centre of the crisis – the fisherman, wildlife conservationists, the tourism managers? They may think their government is being stingy, stupid or both.

But I’m probably most saddened by the nationalist rhetoric being deployed, and I say this despite being Indian – neither British nor American: the US needed and needs the UK, and vice-versa. Obama has cooled towards the Conservatives and Cameron, even though the latter acts like Americas lapdog (certainly a continuation of UK foreign policy in that respect). But the US can ill-afford to lose more friends, let alone it’s staunchest ally. What if the UK also ‘loses it’ and starts demanding action against US companies perceived to have exacerbated or promulgated the last financial crisis. While Europe roasts thanks to Greece’s profligacy, the spotlight is off America which until recently was stewing in Wall Street’s odorous juices…

Maybe President Obama will make angry noises now, and win the day after-all. Maybe it’s just a knee-jerk reaction to a hysterical US media demanding blood: BP’s, preferably. But that’s not how US presidents are expected to react. Certainly not this one. Please Mr President – don’t lose it now.

Iran sanctions: bullies swagger, people stagger

Iran’s tentative dance with the West continues today, as the UN proposes imposing a fourth round of sanctions. Aimed at curbing the alleged Persian desire for nuclear weapons, it has, at best, done no more than rattle sabres on all sides and raise tempers in an already apoplectic Middle East.

I can’t help feeling irritated and annoyed with this. Iran has at last made a concessionary swap of low-grade fissile material for enriched, non-weapons grade uranium. Brokered by Turkey and Brazil, this IS a step forward. Condemned by the US and usual suspects UK and France as “too little, too late”, it is much more than anything their good offices have achieved yet. While President Ahmadenijad makes no friends by railing that this is a “one-off” deal, the fact is, it was struck and is going ahead.

Certainly, Turkey and Brazil cannot be happy with these latest proposed sanctions. Their diplomatic credentials are questioned whenever brokerage with perceived rogue states like Iran gets underway. Both are in the G-20; one is a BRIC and both have UN Security Council membership aspirations. Neither wants to look stupid thanks to the ravings of the Iranian leadership but equally, neither wants to be humiliated by condescending threats of stiff sanctions rolled-out by the White House. Worse still that Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton, like some stiff schoolmistress, should roll these threats out while visiting inconsequential Ecuador – in Brazil’s own backyard!

But! How many divisions does the Pope have: or in this case what veto powers do Turkey or Brazil have? None whatsoever.  Sanctions will go ahead, as it appears both China and Russia, desperate to avoid confrontation over Iran, will press sanctions while offering carrots and cookies to Tehran through other channels.

The outcome: no change. The grim visage of Ayatollah Khomeini gazes down upon his subjects and his people in power. Again, Iran, like the so-called rogue states, will be in a corner, pushed, harried, angered and therefore doubly dangerous. Again, the hardliners will win, their popularity and power diminishing at home, even as ordinary Iranians grown frustrated and furious. Of course, imposing sanctions and then expecting to talk on equal terms, is quite impossible. And the US knows it. That’s why it does it.

Methinks the ladies protesteth too much