Kenya dilemma: Why Obama can’t speak out about his father’s tribe

Barack Obama has a dilemma. Should he draw attention to the current crisis in Kenya, where members of his father's own people are involved in bloody conflict? Or should he keep an arm's length from the subject, wary of falling into the trap of being perceived as the Black/African candidate in the run-off against Hillary Clinton?

As one observer of the Obama campaign remarked today, "Of course he cares. But can he afford to be associated with evening TV news footage of machete-wielding teenagers butchering each other in the suburbs of Nairobi? No, he can't."

How sensitive the issue has become for the Democratic contender is well illustrated by this picture from The First Post's photo spread from Kenya, posted today. A young man lifts a rock to crush an already dead or badly injured boy from a rival tribe. The aggressor is a member of the Luo tribe - of which Obama's father was a member.

Already Raila Odinga, the Opposition leader who claims President Mwai Kibaki's election victory on December 27 was corruptly earned, has claimed to be a cousin of the Democratic hopeful. He told the BBC recently that Obama's father - also called Barack - was his maternal uncle.

The truth is that Obama's links with Kenya are, frankly, slim. His Kenyan father met and married his American mother when they were university students in Hawaii. But Barack Snr left the family when Barack Jnr was only two to study at Harvard and, apart from a brief visit home when his son was ten, never visited again.

Today, Barack Obama is the first black American in his nation's history to have a real chance of becoming president. And just when his background could really count, the long-standing black-American romance with Africa is once again called into question.

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 31, 2008