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“ LA’s like Johannesburg, New York’s like Johannesburg, Detroit’s like Johannesburg...
Freedom Ain’t
Nothin’ But A Word
ain’t nothing but a word…let me see your ID”
S
TANDING in line as dawn broke over King’s School in Akron, Ohio recently I had a strange
sense of déjà vu. It was election day in the United States of America, the wealthiest, most
powerful and supposedly the most advanced democracy in the world. Yet the anxious wait
reminded me more of the first democratic elections in a newly-liberated South Africa that I had
covered almost exactly 10 years earlier. Report by Gary Younge in New York.
In 1994 I had woken up with a family in Soweto who
had prepared huge meals for the long day ahead and
boiled the water for fear that the ‘Boers’ would
contaminate the local water tank literally to poison
their day of liberation. All morning I had waited for a
bolt to strike me with the full import of the moment:
some poignant remark or emblematic event that would
sum up the gravity of the occasion.
But it never happened like that. In the end the thing
that caught my breath was the simple, understated
sight of a low fog clearing to reveal thousands of pairs
of shoes walking the final stretch to freedom in silence
and with determination.
Ten years on in Akron it felt as though the world was
walking in an entirely different direction. Earlier that
morning Republicans in Ohio had won a legal victory
that allowed them to place thousands of people inside
polling venues to challenge the eligibility of voters and
ostensibly prevent fraud.
Two lower courts had ruled in
favour of Democrat complaints
that the presence of
challengers would intimidate
minority voters and could
create chaos and delays.
A poll released just a few
weeks earlier by the Joint Centre for Political and
Economic Studies revealed that, following the debacle
in Florida four years earlier, almost two thirds of black
Americans (63%) were concerned that their vote might
not even be counted next Tuesday.
So in Akron as in Soweto two questions on election
day remained paramount: how long would they have
to wait? And when they finally made it to the booths
would their votes, particularly those of African
Americans, actually count? »