I. Obama’s Roots in Polygamy and the Ford Foundation 21Part of candidate Obama’s technique in composing his reminiscences of his fugitive father is
unquestionably to project backward into the world of almost half a century ago the categories of
race, Afrocentrism, and multiculturalism which were not in fact operative in those days in the ways
that the current candidate suggests. As the British series points out, ‘“Mr Obama Junior claims that
racism on both sides of the family destroyed the marriage between his mother and father. In his
book, [candidate Obama] says that Ann’s mother, who went by the nickname Tut, did not want a
black son-in-law, and Obama Senior’s father didn’t want the Obama blood sullied by a white
woman. In fact Ann divorced her husband after she discovered his bigamous double life. She
remarried and moved to Indonesia with young Barack and her new husband, an oil company
manager. Obama Senior was forced to return to Kenya, where he fathered two more children by
Kezia. He was eventually hired as a top civil servant in the fledgling government of Jomo Kenyatta
- and married yet again. Now prosperous with a flashy car and good salary, his third wife was an
American-born teacher called Ruth, whom he had met at Harvard while still legally married to both
Kezia and Ann, and who followed him to Africa. A relative of Mr Obama says: “We told him
[Barack] how his father would still go to Kezia and it was during these visits that she became
pregnant with two more children. He also had two children with Ruth.” It is alleged that Ruth
finally left him after he repeatedly flew into whisky-fuelled rages, beating her brutally. Friends say
drinking blighted his life - he lost both his legs while driving under the influence and also lost his
job. However, this was no bar to his womanising: he sired a son, his eighth child, by yet another
woman and continued to come home drunk. He was about to marry her when he finally died in yet
another drunken crash when Obama was 21.”’ (Sharon Churcher, “A drunk and a bigot - what the
US Presidential hopeful HASN’T said about his father,” London Daily Mail, January 27, 2007)
The eyewitness accounts of Obama’s first trip to Kenya assembled by the Daily Mail suggest
that candidate Obama was filled with shock and consternation when he realized that his fantasy
picture of his absentee father did not correspond to anything real: ‘Mr Obama’s 40-year-old cousin
Said Hussein Obama told The Mail on Sunday: “Clearly, Barack has been very deeply affected by
what he has learned about his father, who was my father’s older brother. You have to remember that
his father was an African and in Africa, polygamy is part of life. We have assured Barack that his
father was a loving person but at times it must be difficult for him to reconcile this with his father’s
drinking and simultaneous marriages.” Said adds: “His father was a human being and as such you
can’t say that he was 100 per cent perfect. My cousin found it difficult when he came here to learn
of his half-brothers and sisters born to four different mothers. But just as Africans find the Western
world strange so Americans coming here will find Africa strange.”’ (Sharon Churcher, “A drunk
and a bigot - what the US Presidential hopeful HASN’T said about his father,” London Daily Mail,
January 27, 2007)
For years, candidate Obama had attempted to interpret the little he knew about his father’s life in
terms coherent with popular radical books like Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. In reality
Obama Senior might have been a sad and deluded drunk out of Eugene O’Neill: ‘Far from being an
inspiration, the father whom Mr Obama was coming to know seemed like a total stranger. In his
book, he attempts to put the best face on it. His father, he writes, lost his civil service job after
campaigning against corrupt African politicians who had “taken the place of the white colonials.”
One of Obama Senior’s former drinking partners was Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng. Ochieng says,
however, that his friend’s downfall was his weak character. Although charming, generous and
extraordinarily clever, Obama Senior was also imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his
brain and his wealth, he said. “He was excessively fond of Scotch. He had fallen into the habit of