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It opened as a facetiously as it ended with an obsessive desire to manipulate an image of normality for the Conservative parties first ‘post racial’ MP. Adam Afriyie’s insistence not to be photographed by his “grand second home [that] is a minute’s walk from Parliament” or indeed the House of Commons was because, in his own words, he didn’t want the public to perceive him as being a “politicians on the take”. Even his living room was off limits because he felt it made him look “too posh” and therefore “too Establishment”. It was not a good start.

Afriyie, who seems proud to be a fierce racist apologist, continues his infamy by refusing to expose any discriminatory experiences he has faced or practices he is aware of within the Tory party. He seems proud, almost arrogant of the fact. Indeed, when asked in an earlier interview about his views on what happened when in 1992, John Taylor, an African barrister in Cheltenham, was defeated by a Liberal Democrat after members of his local Tory association disowned him. He responded “It’s a long time ago,”

Many of his detractors refer to him as morally spineless but he responds with the grandiose claim “I consider myself post-racial,”. He continues, “I don’t see myself as a black man. I refuse to be defined by my colour or pigeon-holed in that way.” His barely hidden aspirations of emulating the success of US President Obama are obvious but clearly ill conceived. Despite their ethnic and economic similarities, Obama, who has a documented history of at least, some, community “grass roots” activism, does not fail to acknowledge himself as an African American. This is unlike Afriyie, who tragically despite his obvious intellect, like the patriarch Eugene out of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus, cannot even bring himself to publicly acknowledge the reality and responsibility that comes with recognition of his brown skin reflection in the mirror.

For those who aspire to wealth acquisition without sustainable sincere, public and community based corporate social responsibility, his commitment to the façade of ethnic ambiguousness has paid off big time. His achievements provide a successful template ready for export, to those lost and culturally disinherited young people seeking to emulate other morally dubious, but politically ambitious politicians, entertainers and footballers alike. But is he a role model or as the evidence available strongly suggests - a role muddle?

As if being auditioned for Padz, the hilarious album track by the brilliant Soweto Kinch (parodying the hideously tacky MTV Cribs driven culture) Afriyie announces “You should see our main home set on the river in Windsor,” In doing so, he also inadvertently gives the interviewer an opportunity to highlight that it is a blinging house he shares with his “white second wife”, who is featured proudly like a blond ‘hip hop honey’ (or light skinned ‘playboy bunny’ for the Africentricly culturally challenged), subtly draped all over him in a meticulously posed photograph.

She is labeled as if to prove to us that she is not a WAG or bimbo, as “Tracy-Jane - a barrister previously married to London deputy mayor Kit Malthouse – [now living with Afriyie] and their four young children”. It is a clumsy ploy, in one swift action promoting his ‘family values’ but simultaneously also useful for reminding the papers readers of the sadly all too common trend religiously adhered to by others. This includes Shaun Bailey, Afriyie’s party kinsfolk and fellow political rival David Lammy, Labour MP. The public and private sector is also well catered for with the CEHRs’ beleaguered head - Trevor Phillips, establishment figure head and newsreader - Trevor MacDonald and even the formally progressive but now predictable activist exotica, Darcus Howe.

It is unsurprising that there is no mention of the fact that his divorce from first “glamorous blond” wife and IT business partner, Romi after three years of marriage, left her suffering depression in 2002. Perhaps it was the accusation that “Mrs Afriyie runs a high-class escort agency which supplies or is to be suspected of supplying rich clients with young hostesses for sexual services for money”. A harsh accusation that resulted in a successful libel claim win by Afriyie against the Mail on Sunday, but an unsuccessful image makeover for the aspirant politician.

Still, determined whilst unhappy with his first wife, Afriyie did not give up on his ambition to pass the unwritten Nebbitesque litmus test for African men seeking to be successful in the UK. That is, for candidates to ingratiate themselves with the UK’s ethnic majority they must first reject and subsequently seek to denigrate African women in public through cross cultural marriage.

Addressing the topic, Frantz Fanon brilliantly reveals; “Her love takes me onto the noble road that leads to total realisation.. I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness. When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilisation and dignity and make them mine.”

But in a truly post-racial world, Afriyie would have had the courage to break the tired stereotype, to become a unique self determinate individual like Obama instead of being guided by racist socio-cultural norms adhered to by commoners like Ashley Cole. In deliberately choosing to twice exclude African women as his choice of marriage partner, his politically motivated actions, undermines those in sincere cross-cultural loving relationships, and humiliates, not the African woman whose femininity and beauty he seeks to invalidate, but instead, all those seeking to politically profit by engaging in similar tokenistic practices themselves.

African men like Afriyie cannot claim to aspire to be like Obama because irrespective of views on his politics, at home, Obama has at least the courage and integrity to openly aspire to, and successfully create an African family unit. Through their inactions, they have failed where Obama’s personal and emotional actions reinforces the majestic femininity and beauty of the African woman. True success can and is only ever achieved without compromise of self.

So in failing to manufacture an Obama-lite façade, Afriyie ambitions seem destined to settle lower, perhaps for a statesman’s like image similar to that of the ‘dignified’ former UN Head, Kofi Anan. But once again he is unfortunate. You see, Anan’s sickeningly passive- submissive manner duringboth the Rwandan crisis and the Iraq war fiasco was not in anyway ‘noble’. Instead it exposed and rendered him and the United Nations as an wholly ineffective international open mouthed stool pigeon. Indeed his spineless inactions, whilst awaiting tasty droppings from Tweedle-Bush and Twaddle-Blair has drawn the world into a belligerent war of whiteness similar, but not yet close to the UK-US unholy alliance during Maafa.

No. In truth I think the empty political content of Afriyie’s interview, the meticulously groomed images, the denial of African heritage and subsequent multi-million payoff has exposed the Tories shadow minister as a potential, closet Tiger Woods. A man seeking total privacy not because his professional excellence is a reflection of a virtuous character, but instead because his success is likely to be the result of a vain, immoral, egocentric and controlling mannequin.

I’m sorry if my words seem harsh but I really do not want any of the children in our community to respect this kind of undignified behaviour.

In 2008 a newspaper article suggested that “in his quest for advancement” Afriyie has been receiving voice coaching. It does not stop there. The author continues; “One Westminster mischief even suggests that the grammar-school educated MP for Windsor has been given elocution lessons in an effort to impress David Cameron and his Old Etonian chums”. Unwilling to accept him as an African, the Ghanaian mountain has tragically self mutilated and bulldozed himself in order to meet Mohammed. But as Chris Eubanks, Frank Bruno and the charming Eliza in My Fair Lady has learnt – whilst money can buy pseudo prestige, it can never buy ‘class’. Especially class as defined by the pernicious european politcial elite. In their eyes, Afriyie has more in common with the Billy Ray Valentine character played by the actor Eddie Murphy in Trading Places than he is willing to accept. Sadly it appears everyone around him is aware of this Truth, but like the best paid advisors, all are too afraid of losing their meal ticket to tell him.

But I suppose one of them will have to read this article and report it to him. You can imagine them fearing for their job as they watch him shaking, his temper flaring before he starts laughing to divert the building rage. ‘Its jealousy’ they will claim - that’s right Adam - why don’t you just go on believing its jealousy. Ironically, such is the desperate scramble for power this year, the Tory ploy of ‘celebrity politics’ has succeeded in manipulating Gordon Brown into participating in a desperate ‘personal’ public interview.

But back to the interview and it is worth noting Afriyie feels the need to go one step further, as if to justify his status, to prove his worth. In a boastful exchange re: gaudy profligacy, Afriyie is recorded pontificating more like a crass blinging hip-pop performer than a socially conscious politician. He openly brags about being “super wealthy” and his “chief of staff” having to apologise for sending out an email which read;

“You say he [Afriyie] is worth £13million but this is a significant understatement. Earlier this decade he sold one company for £18million, of which his share was £13million - but he is chairman of three other companies and his actual worth is somewhere between £50million and £100million.”

And as with the picture of Oscar Wilde’s fictional ‘Dorian Grey’, this interview, the first, deliberately give as an exclusive to a notoriously racist tabloid, temporarily offers a glimpse beyond the stage manufactured political mirror masking the spiritually vacuous virtue of a man, of a nasty political party and its artificial veneer shoveling ideological excrement in its desperation to claw back political power.

It was not always like this. It did not have to be like this. Afriyie who made his name through exploiting the computer networking market, is dual heritage and speaks with clinical precision about growing up “in poverty in social housing in Peckham surrounded by some of the most violent estates in London”. He talks as if it is a badge of ethnic authenticity, it is almost convincing but he doesn’t stop there. Chastising his mother who he describes by first name and refers to as “white English” he also comments on his Ghanaian father stating “I never knew my father until I was much older and my mother, Gwen, brought us up alone. She was my rock, the gel at the centre of my life, although her tumultuous relationships with different men made for a constant state of flux at the boundaries of our family.”

The rest of the comments he makes about his siblings and neighbours are equally disparaging, but he is self aware of his difference from what he clearly sees as - the other, the inferior… the African. He remarks “When I joined the Tories in 1989, it was a deeply unfashionable move for a man of colour to make”. He remains a loyal supporter and spurting out election campaigning propaganda he babbles; “Currently we have 12 black and Asian candidates standing in winnable seats. If my role has been to encourage that trend, then I’m proud to have played a part. But it’s the merit of candidates that count, not their colour. If there’d been all-black shortlists, I’d never have stood.”

Once on a roll he can’t stop himself. He defends corrupt MPs claiming their lifestyle is “incredibly expensive”, and then predictable launches a political attack claiming “Labour has this terribly patronising attitude. They see you as helpless and in need of a handout, and their policies breed dependency. It’s a terrible trap.”

A lover of the apartheid supporting Margaret Thatcher, Afriyie admits to worshiping a framed photograph of himself with the former British Prime Minister that acts as a shrine on his mantelpiece. “She’s one of my heroes,” he boasts before pulling up the ladder of his much heralded “self made” success.

So perhaps prophetically when Frantz Fanon wrote in the seminal classic Black Skin, White Masks; “out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white”, he could have been writing the epitaph for Adam Afriyie.

Fanon continues; “I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white. Now – and this form or recognition that Hegel had not envisaged – who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man.
I am a white man.”

Pity.

Toyin Agbetu is a writer, film director, poet, and founder of Ligali, the pan African human rights based organisation