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Published date:
Thursday, 30 October 2008

Johannesburg - Zackie Achmat, South Africa's best-known HIV/AIDS campaigner, makes no bones about who he'd like to see become US president on November 4.

Achmat met Senator Barack Obama when he visited South Africa as part of his four-country Africa tour in 2006 - a trip best remembered elsewhere for the rapturous reception he received in Kenya, homeland of his father.

'I fell in love,' Achmat confesses in a telephone interview.

Such is his admiration for Obama that Achmat's Treatment Action Campaign, an organization that lobbies for improved HIV/AIDS and general health policies, is organizing a 'champagne and razor blades' party on US election day.

If John McCain wins, a mock slitting of wrists will be performed.

For Achmat, what sets Obama apart from Republican candidate McCain is his attempt to understand the devastating impact of the AIDS pandemic on Africa.

'He really came (to South Africa) to learn about HIV,' Achmat says of Obama, who used the trip to denounce the South African government's past reticence on the pandemic and to publicly test for HIV in a Kenyan township.

Yet even Achmat knows that an Obama presidency is unlikely to substantially change the direction of US policy on Africa, and could even signal a turn to the worse.

'I call him my greatest false hope,' Achmat says of Obama.

Barney Mthombothi, editor of South Africa's weekly Financial Mail magazine, has been warning Africans against pinning unrealistic hopes on an Obama presidency for months.

'Africa often tends to behave a bit like an unwanted orphan, who suddenly discovers a famous uncle, who'll hopefully wipe away the tears and provide a protective arm. It doesn't always work that way,' Mthombothi wrote in June. 'He is going to bat for nobody else but America.'

While Obamamania was reaching fever pitch in Kenya this week, with Prime Minister Raila Odinga declaring an Obama president would mean more attention and trade for Africa, analysts were warning the 'change' candidate would probably leave US-Africa policies largely untouched.

In fact, Obama's running mate Joe Biden even signalled in a recent debate that foreign aid could be cut under a potential Democratic administration grappling with the global economic crash.

And when it comes to US aid to Africa, analysts point out, Obama would be hard pressed to better Bush.

No US president has been more generous to Africa. When Bush came to power in 2001, US aid to Africa totalled 1.4 billion dollars a year. The amount authorized for 2008 was over 5 billion dollars.

Most of it goes to the United States President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR). Launched in 2003, PEPFAR pays for life- saving drugs for nearly 1.7 million HIV patients in sub-Saharan Africa - the largest spending ever on a disease by a country.

The President's Malaria Initiative, another Bush creation, is projected to spend around 300 million dollars this year trying to swat a disease that kills more African children than any other.

There's also the Millenium Challenge account, which Bush founded in 2003 to reward developing countries for improved governance with extra aid.

'On the whole the Bush administration policies in Africa have been quite compelling,' according to Brooks Spector, visiting senior lecturer on US foreign policy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Not just on aid, says Spector, who spent 31 years in the US Foreign Service, but also on trade. Since 2000, sub-Saharan African countries have enjoyed duty-free access to the US market for most of their exports under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

In fact, analysts say, contrary to Odinga's claims, an Obama administration may actually, given the Democratic Party's more protectionist leanings, be less advantageous for Africa in trade terms.

While AGOA enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Democratic- controlled Congress and is set to continue until at least 2015, 'the bigger concern is around the WTO (World Trade Organization (WTO) talks,' Peter Draper, research fellow on international trade at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) says.

'It is very clear that Obama is closely tied in with the unions,' he says.

What that could mean, according to Draper, is stricter demands from the US in trade talks with emerging markets on labour standards and climate change.

Such conditions would be aimed mainly at US rivals India and China but could also theoretically affect trade with the likes of South Africa, one of the world's top emitters of climate-change gasses.

In the end of the day, an Obama presidency would be a chiefly symbolic victory for Africa, says Brooks Spector.

Just as former US president John F Kennedy's election in 1960 was embraced as a victory for Catholics worldwide, so would the election of a black president be seen as a coup for blacks.

'Symbolism matters, says Spector. 'It's the pictures inside heads that really matter.'

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