Harvard doctor says he’s future for Congo
KINSHASA, Congo – Congo’s least likely presidential candidate says it’s time for Africa to let go of its gun-toting dictators and elect people who can think.
Dr. Oscar Kashala, a Harvard-educated cancer researcher and political novice, has left his laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., to hit a rocky campaign trail as his homeland emerges from what has been called “Africa’s world war.”
At a rally Saturday, Kashala belatedly kicked off his campaign for Congo’s July 30 presidential and legislative elections, despite bloody clashes with political opponents, government harassment and threats to companies that work with him.
“He is a son of Congo,” thousands of supporters sang with gusto at the rally. “He never killed; he never looted; his hands are clean.”
Kashala brushes aside criticism that he has not lived in the country he would govern for half his life. The hefty 51-year-old is counting on his frequent trips home since he moved to the United States in 1987, his history as a student activist and his many good works, building laboratories, getting donations for medical equipment and training doctors in the nation once known as Zaire.
He says Africa’s renaissance must be led by people like him and fellow Harvard alum Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the new president of Liberia, not the gun-toting guerrillas and socialist ideologues who fought for the continent’s liberation from colonizers and dictators.
“The skills you need to do that (fight) are a very different skill set from what you need once you become free and need to develop,” Kashala said Saturday night in an interview with The Associated Press.
news.yahoo.com
I highly doubt that Africans need to go to Harvard in order to become thinkers. Scary.