Sir Donald Trump: Africa’s Hero!

Media platforms are awash with a venomous cascade of backlash at Donald Trump’s recent and now very infamous tirade on the inherent inadequacy of Africans as brothers in this great, civilized ‘society of men’.

Trump – the maverick, snobbish and ‘refreshingly goonish’ front-runner for the American Republican Presidential candidature in next year’s polls – went on record for unequivocally declaring that the African people are a good-for-nothing lot of malingering, disingenuous, and wretched hangers-on who; three-hundred years after the abolition of slavery and half a century after the end of colonialism are still the world’s development laughing-stock and golden example of what human society ‘‘ought never to be’’!

It is against this brash and brusque statement that several of my fellow Africans have in the past few days launched all but a fully-fledged war on the Republican Presidential hopeful; falling over each other in an apparent race to see who condemns Trump the loudest.

For some reason, I find couched deep in the bitter African response to Trump’s ‘‘gibberish’’, a subliminal desire by Africans to be appreciated and loved by the rest of the world – despite the obvious failings of our society.

We Africans seem to be suffering from an attention-deficiency and an acute need to be constantly pampered and praised.

 Isn’t this why our leaders are given Nobel prizes for the ‘unthinkable feat’ of fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities?

Isn’t it why some of our men hang themselves, or beat-up their wives because a certain European football club lost a game?

Isn’t it why our women somehow never look beautiful until they’ve baked their skins yellow to become poor ‘copies’ of their white counterparts?

And in being attacked by Trump – many Africans felt that they were being disowned by the great ‘Daddy’ America. So they got around to consoling themselves –

‘He’s a mad man …’

‘He won’t win the election …’

‘He doesn’t speak for the majority of Americans …’

Well, polls are around the corner - just let’s wait and see!

Before some rash spokesperson misquotes me, let me hasten to say that as an African person – I too have been grievously offended by Trump’s utterances, and feel that the fellow is a loose-canon whose potential for harm is great. Great indeed.

But rather than succumb to irrational knee-jack reactionary outbursts, let’s backtrack a little and put a few things into perspective.

A few months ago, at the start of the campaign trail – Trump hit the ground swinging, hacking and chopping in every imaginable direction.

His first diatribe was leveled against the hemorrhagic flow of illegal immigrants from neighboring Mexico; where a series of corrupt and spineless governments have been hamstrung by a cabal of drug-cartels whose racketeering has made social development in that country almost impossible.

The natural instinct of ordinary Mexicans – millions of whom live in dire poverty because their government is unable to offset the cartels, and is oftentimes rumored to be in cahoots with the drug dealers – is to flee across the border to seek a more ‘livable’ life in the United States.

These poor Mexicans– bereft of education or skills – are so desperate to leave their miserable lives and home behind that they tunnel under the mile-long coterminous fence in the dark of night or make incursions in the wall just to get across; and often get arrested and deported, or shot to death in the attempt.

Does the experience ring any bells?

It should. Of the Nigerians, Tunisians, Gabonese and other African nationals who drown annually in their cumulative millions as they attempt the risky crossing of the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum in Spain or Greece; some eventually finding their way to America.

While we mourn the unburied corpses of these fellow Africans which feed fish at the bottom of the Atlantic, those who make it across count themselves so ‘‘lucky’’ and favored of God that they straight away get to work washing the soiled continence-pads (nappies?) of elderly Europeans, cleaning toilets, prostituting themselves or other menial odd-jobs – and return to us after a decade with fancy jewelry, phony accents and tales of having lived the American or European dream.

But if you look at it critically – these Mexicans and Africans are not in any way living or pursuing the American dream when they are smuggled into that country.

What life is there in being pimped in Chicago’s brothels?

What liberty is there in washing the excrement of New York’s senior citizens?

What happiness is being pursued in the drudgery of waiting at Texan restaurant tables?

This is where one realizes that the Mexicans and Africans Donald Trump alludes to are not the educated, career-building minority that go to America seeking an education or meaningful employment for which they qualify; but the horde of lice and poverty-infested refugees who flee their own homelands because their own societies have literally crumbled.

A sagacious friend, Wobusobozi Amooti Kangere, likes to refer to this sorry lot as cowards who abandon their societies in the throes of nation-building and ran off to so-called ‘‘greener lands’’ where the ancestors of those countries worked hard, long ago, to build a sane society for their children.

We can imagine Donald Trump is one of these children.

Of course – broader arguments can be made about how America is historically a nation of immigrants; and how much of its wealth and power is the direct fruit of four centuries of African slave labor; but we both know how inane that argument is.

You and I, as Africans, are not going to claim a stake in the American economy on account of an odd African who was captured off the coast of Ghana in the 1200s, with whom by some extrapolation of continental migration we may have had a remote blood-tie!

I mean – I know Eastern and Southern Africa’s Bantu and Luo are said to have migrated from West Africa and all – but please – let's spare ourselves the mockery.

So – at the end of the day; we need not look at Donald Trump as an isolated case of brain damage (though a strong case could be made against the man’s wits), but as a brazen and brave man who speaks the mind of many, many Americans and Europeans who, for political correctness and the historical guilt associated with slavery and colonialism, are afraid of saying some things bluntly.

If you doubt my suspicions – all you’ve got to do is look at the man’s popularity - whose ratings continue to soar with each successive ‘extreme’ utterance he makes.

Do you think the American voting public is stupid? Perhaps, but I don’t believe so.

After Obama’s eight years of platitude and ingratiating diplomacy, it may just be that Americans feel unsafe.

While the rest of the world sees Tramp as a dangerous liability, Americans see him as a man who’ll not fling the doors of their painstakingly-built and orderly mansion wide open for a bunch of ingrates and third-world ‘vermin’  to infest.

Sounds painful? Even callous?

I know. But perhaps beneath the storm – a silver lining peeks.

To understand curious cases like Trump – we may have to recall that he is a white man who was born and bred in a country where the neighborhoods of the black community are largely famous (or caricatured) for being over-run with crime and unemployment; and the people with a strong inferiority complex.

In the same way that most Africans are poor, diseased and ignorant as a direct result of their uncaring and remiss governments – Donald Trump, like may white Americans, is the product of an upbringing that taught him to be egotistic and entitled.
Most Americans actually believe their nation to be the greatest on earth, which we must confess to be true, however begrudgingly - at least militarily speaking.

But even so - is Donald Trump or any American to blame for Africa’s poverty or the stupidity of our leaders?

Is he to be blamed for the failure of Mexico’s government to provide the most basic of needs for its citizens?

Is Trump to be blamed for the collapse of the African family, the erosion of our mores and hatred for our own culture?

And when Trump alluded to Africa’s ripeness for colonial re-conquest; perhaps he wasn’t too wrong – we certainly still name our children after colonialists; forcibly teach them colonial languages (like the one this article's written in); and make them worship foreign gods.

 Is Trump to be blamed for this too?

Granted, Donald Trump is no genius. He may to an extent even be stupid, if not foolish – but his stupidity pales when compared with the utter imbecility displayed by Africa’s leaders who starve their people, fuel murderous civil wars, quash their youth’s dreams, oppress free speech, pillage national treasuries and commit all other forms of idiocy imaginable!

Let us, as Africans, embrace Trump’s irreverent attack on our essential humanity and collective-worth as a wake-up call, not another opportunity to tear out our hair, and wear the sackcloth of self-pity and societal whining that has long been our attitude to any serious challenge.

Let it be a clarion call to arms – whence we may begin to have the painful conversations on whether the continent truly is headed in the right direction.

On whether the corruption and impunity that we allow to grow unchecked as we lose ourselves in jobs to accumulate money is what will secure our children’s future.

On whether it is good that our women should derive their identity and self-worth, from heads flamboyant with fake and synthetic foreign hair.

On whether our young men should take pride in spending fortunes on Escalades and VXs and other superficial accumulations that worsen our continent’s chronic dependency.

Before we rush to our China-made gadgets and handsets; and post the next insult at Donald Trump – let us query why Africa has to import these gadgets in the first place.

Above all – we should have a conversation on culture and the things that add meaning to life.

If memory serves me right, not many people came out to condemn Trump for his first attack on the Mexicans at the time, except of course the Mexicans themselves.

Yet now that they are singled out, Africans lash out in a passionate furor – while the rest of the world remains conspicuously quiet.

They either didn’t even notice or just don’t care; which reveals just how selfish human groups can be!

Finally, it may be necessary to let our anger subside and look anew at the ‘abuses’ Trump allegedly hurls at us.

Perhaps what Mr. Trump says isn’t as offensive as some would have us believe.

Trump accuses Africans of laziness.

Oh yes - we do love to sing and dance; and sit under the sun all day, sipping on millet brew; but who doesn’t?

Isn’t this what men throughout history have always desired? Isn’t this what every working person aims to do when they finally retire? Isn’t this what paradise is all about?

Trump accuses Africans of addiction to love-making.

But truly – what is living, if not loving?

Loving of self, of one’s fellows; loving life enough to live it.

If you think a man who loves to sit under the sun and make love is good for nothing – then either you have your priorities wrong; or aren’t quite as human as you presume to be.

We may need to reassess things before we begin to bay for the man's blood - and call for Mr. Trump's head on ''trumped'' up charges (no pun intended!).

For that bitter-sweet reality check, Trump surely deserveth equestrian honors.

Says I - before he clinches the Republican Party's nomination, and by all telltale indicators the American Presidency come next year - for his eye-opener, good ol’ Donald Trump should be anointed an African Knight!

 Trump's statements, which are most probably an unfounded parody, by the way, are viewable in detail; at http://www.politics.co.ke/news/some-africans-are-lazy-fools-only-good-at-eating-lovemaking-and-stealing-donald-trump-2/