The US leader is simply saying, ‘Africans, sort yourselves out!’

US President Donald Trump’s foul-mouthed comment contains a hidden message Africans should take seriously: “Sort yourselves out.” PHOTO | AFP 

In Summary

• Pause and reflect on what we Africans have spent the last half-century doing with or to our countries and ourselves. One need not work too hard to establish that there are African countries whose citizens are, in some respects, worse off than they were at Independence.

By FREDRICK GOLOOBA-MUTEBI
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Ever since he was elected President of the United States, Donald Trump has fascinated and outraged many across the world and become the subject of near-obsession for some in the US and elsewhere.

I don’t care for Trump and usually ignore most things written about him. Every time I see anything written about him on social media, I delete it without so much as paying attention to the details.

This has partly to do with a natural aversion to jumping onto bandwagons just because people around me are doing so. It also has to do with the attitude that there are things I do not need to know.

The more they are about people or events that do not impact my day-to-day existence, the more I can do without knowing about them.

Ever since Mr Trump was elected into office, I have viewed him with detached indifference, paying attention to what he is saying or doing only occasionally, for the most part only when I can’t avoid it.

Whenever Americans are quarrelling about whatever statement he has made or action he has taken, I feel the same way as I believe Americans feel when Africans in any country feel aggrieved about the words or actions of their president.

I feel that way because, as I have stated before, under normal circumstances what happens inside the United States, just as what happens in say, Turkmenistan, does not and should not concern me.

I do not live in the US and I do not want to live there, although the odd visit is not such a bad thing. Also, over here, in this little corner of Africa where I live, there is so much to worry and be concerned about that I have no time to worry and be concerned about the latest quarrel Americans are having with or about their seemingly simultaneously popular and unpopular president.

I know some will argue that one needs to pay attention to what the US is doing or what its leaders are saying or thinking, because it is a superpower. As far as I am concerned it depends on the circumstances. There are things that go on in the US to which I need not pay any attention, because they have nothing to do with me or with my life as it is.

Recently, however, I sat up and paid attention to Trump’s characterisation of African countries and others in Latin America and the Caribbean as sh**hole countries. Now, that sounded like Trump. Do I agree with the characterisation? I don’t. Has it angered me? Nope. I shall come to why, in a moment.

First let’s see how Africans reacted. It was fascinating to listen to and watch the angry responses and the denunciations and characterisations of the US President, some of which I dare not repeat here.

I must say, though, that I was rather disappointed by the affirmations that came from some Africans, some notable ones from US-based Africans, that indeed the countries where they were born are sh**holes.

One Nigerian outdid himself. Of course, there are issues in Nigeria that drive him bonkers, which he made known. For some reason, he struck me as a child from a poor background going to visit posh friends and reacting by denouncing the sh**hole house in which his parents have raised him.

Anyway, although I would not call any country a shi**hole, and although to that extent I disagree with the President of the United States, I believe it is more useful to look into the underlying reasons for his statement than at the statement itself. The statement is insulting. But is there not something to be said for his low opinion of our countries? After all, he did not say that about Asian countries.

It is not difficult to figure out why he could not possibly characterise Asian countries in the same way. Asians, for the most part, have spent the last 50 years working hard to get their act together and push themselves, politically, economically and in other ways, to levels where the idea that anyone would think of their countries as sh**hole countries would be patently laughable.

But now pause and reflect on what we Africans have spent the last half-century doing with or to our countries and ourselves. One need not work too hard to establish that there are African countries whose citizens are, in some respects, worse off than they were at Independence.

Only in a few countries can current leaders and even their immediate predecessors boast, justifiably, that they have transformed their people’s lives for the better, generally speaking.

And now think of all the avoidable conflicts, thanks to which our economies and living standards have stagnated, regressed in some cases, so much so that these days, Africans at potentially the most ambitious, creative and productive stages of their lives prefer to die on the high seas trying to reach Europe, in all likelihood to do menial work, to staying on the continent.

All this suggests that Trump’s foul-mouthed comment contains a hidden message we should take seriously: “Sort yourselves out.”

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com