For many of us watching from a whole world away it seems like the United States of America has two presidents; Joe Biden and Donald trump.
This is exactly what the founders of that great Republic had feared and went to great lengths to make sure it never happened.
“One president at a time,” has been like a second religion to Americans.
Yet the United States of America finds itself busy trying to exorcise the ghost of Donald Trump.
It is not an easy task. And the man will simply not go away.
Trump is an embarrassment to the liberal establishment elite.
He is everything that this class is not. He is crude, uncouth and totally unpolished.
He has also been an angel especially to the rural Americans and those with no college education.
He has an axe to grind against establishment politics.
He preaches the politics of exclusion and makes to pretense about it.
“America first,” gas been his rallying cry. “Make America great again,” has been his other.
He still does not understand why America should pay billions every year to keep rich countries like Germany, Japan and South Korea safe.
And many, many Americans agree with him.
As I pen this down, I also have one eye on his ongoing impeachment trial, the second in as many years.
Trump has left Washington but his image looms large.
The trial gives him exactly the kind of publicity he craves.
He likes it that way. He has always been an image man. For better or for worse, he wants to remain in the nation’s psyche.
That is only half the story.
Trump has been able to weaponize his base inside the Republican party.
Donald trump Jr. recently said the Republican party is now the Trump party. It was a hyperbolic statement, but a point was made.
Trump has the whole Republican party under his control. Everybody is dead scared of annoying him.
African dictators will no doubt grin with envy at him.
The Trump base are people who are loyal not to the party and its ideals but to Trump personally.
They are also the people who feel nothing but despair. They feel left behind.
Somehow, they are acutely worried that their country and also their way of life are being taken away from them.
The upshot is America that is a country of two nations.
The American elite would rather not talk about it.
Officially Joe Biden is the president. He has won elections. And is now commander in chief.
He has been sworn in and has pretty much announced all his key positions in government.
His agenda is pretty clear.
He says he wants to carry everybody along and unite the nation, yet there is a whiff of Obama third term about all his big decisions.
If that is true, then we have not seen the last of Donald Trump or someone like him – probably worse.
Trump’s brazen attitude often made African leaders grin and look the other way without tendering even a slightest reply.
He beat everybody into silence. And many more were intimidated by his use of social media to go after political opponents and those he felt he had an axe to grind against.
Biden wants to be everything to everybody as he touches on Iran, China, European Union and Africa.
He has talked about racial justice and climate change among other things. He has been talking non-stop about Covid-19 pandemic which has killed more Americans than any nation in the world.
But vaccine has now arrived in America. Yet the rest of Africa remains in the fark about when it will receive its vaccine.
Africa and the African Americans are omnipresent in Biden’s agenda, it would seem like.
If that is true, he can show with Covid-19 and save Africa.
He has used his appointment of African Americans to burnish his case that he means it when he says it is their turn.
African Americans had walked away in protest after feeling betrayed by Barack Obama, America first and so far only black president.
Biden was Obama’s vice president – for the two terms.
Africa’s standing in America has been declining since the days of George W. Bush when it was at the highest.
Bush delivered PEPFAR that saved millions of African lives and also Agoa (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act) that delivered livelihoods to millions of Africans.
Obama had wanted to establish a path of democracy for Africa and the Africans.
In his first visit to Africa as United States president the then exuberant Obama stopped at Accra, Ghana where in a typically detached fashion he delivered a powerful speech against Africa’s strongmen. The continent, he said needed strong institutions not strongmen. It was a speech laden with relevance at the time. The continent had too many strongmen; Muammar Ghaddafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Al Bashir in Sudan to give a few examples.
In the end it ended in despair for both African Americans and Africans.
Perhaps people expected too much.
For his admirers, Biden promises to be a real deal.
He won the American presidency on the back of a solid African American vote – from the primaries all the way to the White House.
“You have had my back. I will have yours,” he recently said as he talked about social justice and equity. He has appointed African Americans to a few significant positions, including that of Secretary of Defence, Ambassador at the United Nations and also Assistant Secretary for Africa.
But Biden comes at a time when the African continent has effectively been taken over by China.
China is by far the biggest investor in the continent, especially on infrastructure, energy and mining.
Yet China’s investments in Africa are in no way tied to human rights record.
In a big way China’s presence in Africa has been purely economic, self-serving and even mercantilist.
It will not be easy for Biden to immediately wean Africa from china.
More difficult will be selling his climate change and green energy rhetoric to African leaders who are so used to unaccountability as facilitated and enabled by China.
China has reduced the African continent to a client.
Africa, if Biden is serious about his vision might turn out to be a place where the United States foreign policy and that of China will collide.
If that happens, it will not be a pleasant scene.
The last few years have seen America turn its back against Africa.
During that time, especially under president Trump, the African leaders, many of them corrupt and tyrannical have benefitted from China’s see no evil policy.
Once recipients of food handouts, cooking oil and clothes, Africans felt deserted at their time of need.
By far America’s biggest beneficiary in Africa is Egypt which a guaranteed annual stipend of $1.3 billion in military aid and for reasons that are not even Africa. That money is part of America’s elaborate security guarantees for Israel.
Africans at home and abroad should hold Biden to his word and demand that his actions should match his words.
Or their hope will for the umpteenth time turn into despair.
