A Brilliant and Insightful Examination of the Upcoming Election from South Africa, Part 2

Election Day. The long, long campaign nears its painfully slow conclusion at last. Of course, I won’t actually find out the results until sometime between 4:30 and 8 a.m. here in Cape Town. Fortunately, for those of you not among the probably less than one percent of American voters supporting Bob Barr, I will cease and desist from harassing people who actually follow the mainstream election coverage and who are actually interested in supporting a mainstream candidate who may have a chance to win. Instead, I will blog about the opinions of South Africans and foreigners studying or working in Cape Town with regards to the presidential elections. (McCain supporters may want to stop reading now.)

Like basically the rest of the world, every South African I have met supports Barack Obama. This holds true regardless of their age, race, gender, education level, South African political affiliation, religion, and income. Also, just about every South African I meet wants to talk to me about the election, including people on the train and the postal clerk I bought stamps from yesterday. In fact, I can imagine I have many more enjoyable political conversations here than American students did in the years immediately following the 2004 election.

In general, South Africans support Senator Obama as embodying a change in America’s attitude in the world and because of the symbolism of historically white America electing a black president. Although the white liberal activists who make up the bulk of our program speakers strongly support Obama, black South Africans seem even more committed to this symbolic nature and the hope for racial healing it holds out for South Africa as well. While most people don’t seem to be personally against Senator McCain, they do have major problems with President Bush and tend to see McCain, fairly or not, as representing the continuation of current policies.

As far as international students go, generally liberals seem to sign up for study abroad programs to Africa, particularly Marquette’s South Africa Service Learning Program. This doesn’t reflect poorly on them or the program; if anything, it reflects poorly on libertarians and conservatives. From my own internal polling of Kimberley House, I can guarantee that Bob Barr received more vote(s) than John McCain, but that Barack Obama took the precinct in a landslide. I have yet to meet an American here who supports John McCain and every non-American international student I have talked to backs Obama as well. Regardless of their many policy similarities and their few policy differences, which aside from abortion are primarily differences in degree than in kind, the election of Senator Obama today would at least make America much more popular in South Africa.

[One last note on my own views. I realized that I didn’t address pro-life issues at all in my previous post despite my strong opposition to abortion. For pro-lifers wondering how any of their number could “waste” a vote in such an “historic” election, I suggest reading an excellent essay by G. C. Dilsaver about how voting Republican doesn’t deal with the root issues, which basically sums up my view; for the opposing view, arguing that McCain’s pro-life stance is the only reason for a conservative to vote for him but a compelling one nonetheless, read this intriguing and rather convincing article comparing McCain to the Tsar of Russia but still advocating a vote for him.]

Don’t worry. It’s almost over, and we can all go back to worrying about the Packers instead.

God bless,

Andy