Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Africa Slur or the Death of Diplomacy

• DUNIA ZONGWEAS MOVIE lovers rush to Maerua Mall and Grove Mall in Windhoek to watch the premiere of the blockbuster Black Panther, a multimillion-dollar celebration of Africa and blackness, it is hard to miss the almost perfect timing of the film’s release.

Indeed, the showing of the Marvel motion picture follows the remarks reportedly made only a few weeks ago by the US president, in which he described Haiti, El Salvador and unnamed nations in Africa as “shithole countries”. Sadly, the African response to president Donald Trump’s slur lacked strategy.

The African Union (AU) demanded a retraction and an apology. The only dissonant voice was Uganda president Yoweri Museveni, who “love[s] Trump for being frank with Africans”.

As remarked by Selma Ashipala-Musavyi, the permanent secretary of the Namibian international relations ministry, Trump’s rude comment has “no place in diplomatic discourse”. But, with the arrival of Trump in the White House last year came the rise of white supremacy ideology, and the burial of deft diplomacy.

To be fair, Trump is not the first head of state to use undiplomatic or racist language. Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran), are all known for their venomous tongues.

What makes Trump’s “shithole” comment unprecedented in history is not its undiplomatic tone; it is its sheer vulgarity, which leaves no room for doubting that, rather than a frank and objective opinion, it was nothing other than an insult. Unfortunately, the response of African nations was tepid, if not timid. In the circumstances, the smart strategy consisted in raising the costs of engaging in the undesirable behaviour (e.g. insults) so that the offending state cannot engage in such conduct without at the same time inflicting on itself great reputational harm. If Trump used those words, it is because he did not believe there is a high price to pay for insulting Africans and Blacks in general. It is that belief that the AU should have shattered. The AU should have rallied support from allies from other continents. Research by scholars such as Andrew Guzman shows that states’ behaviour on the international scene is to a large extent guided by a concern for their reputation.

On 21 January 2018, French president Emmanuel Macron told the media that he shared the continent’s outrage at Trump’s offensive comment. It is thus not difficult to imagine how the AU could have obtained official statements from allies and leaders such as Macron, Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel, and Vladimir Putin that either specifically condemned Trump’s language, or generally reaffirmed their stance against racism. Plus, getting support from nations from other continents would have changed the perception that this was just an Africa-Trump duel.

The strategy would have not only altered the pay-offs and calculations of Trump or any Trump wannabes, it would have effectively isolated him. This strategy was at play in December last year when Trump unilaterally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in defiance of several UN security resolutions on the status of that city. In another outlandish move, Trump – through his ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley – publicly threatened to defund the UN, and “take the names” of countries who would oppose his unilateral decision and punish them for their opposition. The undiplomatic strategy backfired in a spectacular fashion in both the Security Council (especially) and the General Assembly of the UN, where the US was massively outvoted and isolated, even by its traditional allies, despite Trump’s muscle-flexing.

That said, the AU strategy is not without merit. First of all, it demanded an apology from Trump, “not only to the Africans, but to all people of African descent around the globe”.

Apparently, Trump’s jibe jolted the AU into reclaiming its lost Pan-Africanist roots. Like historian Amzat Boukari-Yabara noted, the AU has long been living in self-denial as it tends to ignore the diaspora (e.g. Haiti, Jamaica), who are still not represented in the AU’s membership or institutional structures. What is more, the fact that Africans spoke collectively through the largely lethargic AU has made the slur particularly costly for Trump, though it did not shame him nearly as much as it would have if the AU had enlisted its many allies in its protest.

Apart from those two qualities, the AU’s riposte was lacklustre. Nevertheless, if there is any lesson for the continent to learn from this incident, it is that diplomacy is a necessity, not a luxury. It is not about sugar-coating the truth (actually, the AU never denied that most countries on the continent face daunting development challenges); it is about preserving state interests and reputation, which determines a state’s ability to secure fruitful cooperation with other states. In a noble effort to educate their wayward president, 48 former US ambassadors to various African countries, and from both Democratic and Republican administrations, wrote in a joint letter that ‘respectful engagement’ with African countries is a “vital part” of protecting US interests.

Trump’s short-sighted slight will linger on for years to come – in history books, intellectual conversations, official statements, and other communication. And this fact, no amount of Hollywood science fiction, no fantasy portrayal of the continent, not even the Africa tour of US secretary of state Rex Tillerson next month, can spin.

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