(AP)
An American president who has "the blood of
Africa within me" praised and scolded the continent of his ancestors
Saturday, asserting forces of tyranny and corruption must yield if
Africa is to achieve its promise.
"Yes you can," President Barack Obama declared, dusting off his
campaign slogan and adapting it for his foreign audience. Speaking
to Parliament, he called upon African societies to seize
opportunities for peace, democracy and prosperity.
"This is a new moment of great promise," he said. "To realize that
promise, we must first recognize a fundamental truth that you have
given life to in Ghana: Development depends upon good governance.
That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many
places, for far too long."
The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black goat
herder-turned-academic from Kenya, Mr. Obama delivered an
unsentimental account of squandered opportunities in postcolonial
Africa.
And he reached back to an older legacy, that of slavery, as he
toured the cannon-lined redoubt where people were kept in squalid
dungeons then shipped in chains to America, through a "Door of No
Return" that opens to the sea.
"It reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great
evil," he said from the stark white stone fortifications of Cape
Coast Castle, converted to the slave trade by the British in the
17th century.
He spoke with the ramparts and the sea behind him and in the company
of his family. Mr. Obama said his girls, in their privileged
upbringing, needed to see that history can take such cruel turns.
In his speech to Parliament, the first U.S. black president spoke
with a bluntness that perhaps could only come from a member of
Africa's extended family.
"No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the
economy to enrich themselves, or if police can be bought off by drug
traffickers," he said.
"No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims
20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is
corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law
gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.
"That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you
sprinkle an election in there," he said, "and now is the time for
that style of governance to end."
He added: "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong
institutions."
Mr. Obama was on a 21-hour visit to the West African nation to
highlight that country's democratic tradition and engagement with
the West. His visit, his first to sub-Saharan Africa as president,
was greeted as a "spiritual reunion" Saturday by Ghanaian
legislators.
He, his wife Michelle, their daughters and the first lady's mother
toured Cape Coast Castle as a festive crowd of thousands milled
outside, pounding drums and dancing in the streets. Mr. Obama smiled
and waved, pausing after he exited the motorcade, before
disappearing with his family and entourage into the courtyard.
Michelle Obama is the great-great granddaughter of a slave who lived
in South Carolina but whose African origins are unknown.
Earlier, people lined the streets, many waving at every vehicle of
Mr. Obama's motorcade as it headed toward a meeting at Osu Castle,
the storied coastline presidential state house, before his speech to
Parliament. "Ghana loves you," said a billboard.
The Obama administration sought a wide African audience for the
president's speech, inviting people to watch it at embassies and
cultural centers across the continent.
The 33-minute address was in part a splash of cold water for
Africans who blame colonialism for their problems.
President Obama spoke of the indignities visited upon Africans from
the era of European rule. He said his grandfather, a cook for the
British in Kenya, was called "boy" by his employers for much of his
life despite his being a respected village elder. He said it was a
time of artificial borders and unfair trade.
But he said the West is not to blame "for the destruction of the
Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children
are enlisted as combatants." Nor for the corruption that is a daily
fact of life for many, he said.
"Africa is not the crude caricature of a continent at perpetual
war," he said. Yet for "far too many Africans, conflict is a part of
life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over
resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience
to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and
tribes.
"These conflicts are a millstone around Africa's neck."
Mr. Obama started his day with typical calm. Wearing a gray T-shirt
and gym pants, he walked through the lobby of his hotel almost
unnoticed at 7:30 a.m. local time on his way to the downstairs gym
for a workout.
A short time later, his motorcade left the hotel, passed under
hovering military helicopters and arrived for a delayed welcome
ceremony with President John Atta Mills.
"I can say without any fear of contradiction that all Ghanaians want
to see you," Mills said. "I wish it were possible for me to send you
to every home in Ghana."
The castle visit mirrored ones paid by Clinton and George W. Bush to
the slave-trading post of Goree Island, Senegal - with the added
impact of Mr. Obama's mixed-race background and history-making
election.
In Ghana, too, Mr. Obama followed in Clinton's footsteps. In 1998, a
surging crowd cheered Clinton in Accra's Independence Square and
toppled barricades after his speech. Clinton shouted, "Back up! Back
up!", his Secret Service detail clearly frantic.
President Bush's reception last year was less tumultuous, but
equally warm. At a welcoming banquet, then-President John Kufuor
noted huge increases in U.S. development aid and AIDS relief - and
named a highway after Mr. Bush.
Mr. Obama avoided scheduling large public events, wishing to keep
emotions in check in a singular moment in African-American
diplomacy.
Mr. Obama flew to Ghana after the G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy,
approved a new $20 billion food security plan. It aims to help poor
nations in Africa and elsewhere to avert mass starvation during the
global recession.
He also had a cordial first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. In their
half-hour private audience at the Vatican, the two reviewed Mideast
peace and anti-poverty efforts, aides reported. They also discussed
abortion and stem cell research at length, subjects of disagreement
between them.