The star politician

Rama Yade, France's junior minister for youth and sports, at 32, is one of the most popular political personalities in the country. Only nine years after graduating from the prestigious Paris Political Science Institute, Yade has become more than a minister. She has become a phenomenon: black, Muslim, female — and one of the brightest stars in President Nicolas Sarkozy's political constellation.

Along with two women of North African Arab descent also named to the government, Yade's main mission when she was appointed in May 2007 was to embody Sarkozy's effort to bring minorities into positions of responsibility. But with her good looks and impudence — qualities French people cherish — she has ended up two years later not only as a poster girl for integration but also as a politician with her own support and the promise of a career on the national stage.

“There is not just the image; there is also substance,” said Lyon Mayor Gerard Collomb, of the opposition Socialist Party. Collomb, only half-joking, added that he had told Yade over lunch that he would find a place for her in the local government or parliamentary representation if she wanted to jump ship from Sarkozy's neo-Gaullist coalition and run for office in Lyon.

Launch to fame
Yade's ascension to stardom was not foreordained, however, in a country where politics traditionally are as exclusive as a London gentleman's club. Born Mame Ramatoulaye Yade in Senegal, West Africa, Yade was brought up on a tight budget by her immigrant mother in the Paris suburb of Colombes. Her father, a diplomat and professor, by then had gone his own way.

After several years as a staff assistant in the Senate, she joined Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, telling acquaintances she admired his proposals for positive discrimination to advance France's growing black and Arab populations. When Sarkozy was formally named the party's presidential candidate in January 2007, Yade gained celebrity with a conservative-oriented speech in which she castigated the opposition Socialist Party as the creator of a “service window republic” in which immigrant children got “pity instead of respect”.

Along with Rachida Dati, the daughter of Algerian immigrants, Yade emerged as a media star during the 2007 presidential campaign, particularly among conservatives who were delighted to hear their beliefs championed by a black and an Arab. Both hailed Sarkozy as someone who would do something for minorities besides talk. When Sarkozy was elected, Dati was named justice minister and Yade was plopped down in the previously non-existent post of junior minister for human rights under Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

During the same year, Yade published her first book, Blacks of France, in which she analysed the place in French society occupied by African immigrants' children and other French blacks. It reminded people that, despite her own swift rise in a conservative movement, Yade carried the heritage of a black woman in a predominantly white society.
 

Soon after assuming her new job, Yade's refusal to submit to authority became an issue, rubbing fellow officials the wrong way but drawing favourable attention from the public. Sarkozy, seeking political and economic gains, invited Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to Paris.

Yade boycotted official functions, saying Gaddafi should be made to understand “our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come wipe the blood of his deeds off his feet”.

Kouchner, who helped found Doctors Without Borders and had made a career of promoting human rights, swiftly became irritated at Yade's refusal to play by traditional Foreign Ministry rules. But Yade also managed to irritate Sarkozy himself, refusing his exhortation to run in elections for the European Parliament. Yade regarded the European Parliament as a political parking lot and wanted instead to run for the French National Assembly.

Against that background, many commentators expressed surprise to see Yade named junior minister for youth and sports in a government reshuffle in June. Despite her second chance in government, Yade has yet to prove herself as a candidate in a significant election, which aides acknowledge is an obligatory next step. She was elected last year on a government-coalition list to the council of her former hometown of Colombes. But now, aides said, she is contemplating running for an office that would give her a political foothold and allow her to transcend the role of Sarkozy's television-friendly integration symbol.

In that, she has a way to go. As Yade walked down a platform to board a train for Paris, for example, heads turned and many travellers pointed in her direction, recognising the showcase minister. A tall black man, asked whether he knew who she was, replied, “Yes, that's Rachida Dati.” Told he was wrong, he said, “Oh, yeah, it's the other one.”