US energy and environmental policies must help Africa improve the lives of its people - “I see Africa as a … partner with America on behalf of the future we want for all of our children,” President Obama declared in Ghana last July.

However, three months later, the President signed an executive order requiring that the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and other federal agencies reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with their projects by 30% over the next ten years. The order undermines the ability of Sub-Saharan African nations to achieve energy, economic and human rights progress.

Ghana is trying to build a 130-MW gas-fired power plant, to bring electricity’s blessings to more of its people, schools, hospitals and businesses. Today, almost half of Ghanaians never have access to electricity, or get it only a few hours a week, leaving their futures bleak.
 

“The insane notion that Julius Malema could be the heir apparent to the ANC throne, as suggested by Jacob Zuma and the latest report that he is not a factory fault, but the representative of a new generation of ANC leaders, should cause a chill to run down the spine of every sane South African and more especially the whites. 

His public statements that he, apparently single-handedly, conquered the apartheid regime and the colonialists and that he will conquer the children of their children, bears this out.” So says Rev Theunis Botha leader of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) and acting chairman of the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA).

“African history shows us what happens when power-hungry despots rise to become rulers. These self-opinionated men do not tolerate opposition, but rather mercilessly act against anyone who would question them. Theirs is the only opinion that counts and not even those that bow and scrape before them and stroke their egos are safe from there unpredictable fits of fancy.

“Is this what we in South Africa have to look forward to? If it is then should we not act now and do all we can to warn the people, instead of cracking jokes and making light of so serious a matter?”

It is good news and a happy outcome that the Somali pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips have been killed and he has been rescued unharmed. This is quite literally the only way to deal with pirates.

It’s not as if the United States of America hasn’t got a lot of experience dealing with pirates. Ironically, the U.S. Constitution came about in part because the earlier Articles of Confederation left the new nation unable to respond to the attacks on our merchant ships by Barbary pirates.

The Barbary pirates, operating out of the northern part of Africa, had for centuries controlled the shipping trade in the Mediterranean. They were, in fact, less interested in the cargo than in the crews who they would capture, ransom, or sell into slavery. Nations could avoid this by paying tribute to each of the Barbary States. It was a common practice of European nations as well as Great Britain to pay such tribute, including the protection its American colonies until they declared independence.

Dr Christo Landman, spokesperson on Foreign Affairs for the CDA said in a report, that the election of Obama as President of the USA did not come as a surprise:

- An astonishing amount of money was "poured" into his campaign.
- Liberal Media networks, like CNN, and other so-called objective journalists were visibly promoting his candidature.
- The election coincided with an international economic collapse, erroneously solely attributed to the Republican Party and George Bush.
- Republican Afro-Americans like Powell sided with Obama, for obvious reasons.

What is more important is that Obama, like the ANC in SA, made elaborate promises to the American people and black Americans in particular, promises which are unlikely to be fulfilled. In SA such empty and unfulfilled promises, have come back to haunt the ANC to the extent that the Lekota faction has formed another opposition party.

In many cases Afro-Americans are still at the bottom of the financial scale measuring prosperity. It is expected that Obama, as an Afro-American President, will bring fundamental change. But the absence of such change and social transformation will lead to disillusionment and moral defeat. Obama will learn quickly that there is a whole world of reality between empty oratory and absent deeds.