Marcel Tafen plans to run for mayor in the Russian provincial town of Tver under the campaign slogan "He is different." This is to state the obvious: In a town with a population of almost half a million, Tafen, from Cameroon, is one of a few dozen black inhabitants.

Although he has spent nine years in the community halfway down the Volga river between Moscow and St. Petersburg, his presence is still considered so unusual that people in the street persist in following him with their gaze as he walks past.

But Tafen, 28, believes that ultimately the color of his skin will not harm his chances of being elected in October — so far, his novelty value has brought only good publicity. Nevertheless, he anticipates that the campaign could turn dirty. "I know already that some people aren't going to vote for me simply because of the way I look — so I am prepared for all eventualities," he said. A qualified doctor, Tafen arrived in Tver from Cameroon to study medicine when he was 19. He planned to return home as soon as he was qualified, but his burgeoning political career prompted him to change his mind.

Now he is hoping that officials will grant him Russian citizenship in time for him to register for the mayoral race.

Tafen will not be focusing on race issues during his campaign or, were he to win, in his role as mayor. Instead, his program concentrates on improving life for the town's youth. He promises to highlight issues ranging from drug abuse to unemployment and AIDS. The town has one of the highest incidences of AIDS in Russia. A stand-up comic who frequently appears on local television, Tafen also heads the Tver Hip-Hoppers, a local dance club, and is a keen basketball player.

Russia's black community remains small and is still largely concentrated in big university towns — the result of a government program developed in the late 1950s, which helped young people from communist-controlled Third World countries to travel to the Soviet Union to study. With the rise of neo-fascists and the growth of skinhead movements in Russia, black inhabitants have come under repeated attack — although the level of abuse has never equaled that meted out to people from the Central Asian states.

Abdoul Kane, a student from Senegal and an anti-racism campaigner in Moscow, said he feared that Tafen's chances of becoming mayor of Tver were slim.

"Xenophobia in Russia remains very strong. During the Soviet Union, people here had very little information about what Africa was really like, and this bred some extraordinary prejudices," Kane said. "Many people expressed surprise when they learned that there were actually towns in Africa because they thought that everyone lived in mud huts. Some said they had heard that Africans came to Russia to have their tails removed.

"Things are improving, but most of the 3,000-odd Africans now in Moscow have been verbally abused. A minority have also been physically attacked. I think that the opposition candidates in Tver will play heavily on the race issue to destroy his chances."