Donald Trump: What would be his likely policy for Africa?

We live in a “global village” where something happening in one place often reverberates across the world. One such occurrence is the ongoing presidential election process in the United States of America. And, with US playing a leading role in international affairs, it matters who will eventually become the President of the United States (POTUS). So, what to make of the prospect of Mr Donald Trump taking the Republican nomination, with the very real possibility he may go on to be POTUS? Like many observers of US affairs, I don’t have much stomach for “The Donald”, as he is sometimes referred to. Given his animus and generally negative temperament, I am one of those who hold the opinion that a Trump presidency would be the worst case scenario. Well, his presidency is not likely to happen. According to an opinion published in the New York Timesby Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter and adviser to three Republican presidents, Mr Trump (a Republican, no less) is precisely the kind of man the US system of government was designed to avoid, the type of leader American founders feared – a demagogic figure who does not view himself as part of US constitutional system but rather as an alternative to it. He is, according to this view, a megalomaniac. But despite what anybody thinks, Mr Trump has his constituency, given his popularity. He, therefore, has a fighting chance and is certainly not out of the equation. Suppose, then, he does become President of the United States, what would likely be his policy towards Africa? Or, more precisely, what does he thinks of inhabitants of this continent, as this is likely to influence his Africa policy? First, his electioneering campaign has been characterised by racism and divisiveness – starting with the hate card against Mexicans (he says Mexico sends “rapists” and other criminals to the United States) and that Muslims should be barred from entering the US. He has also exaggerated the role of blacks in violent crime in a tweet that claimed that most whites are killed by blacks. Yet, according to available Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data, 82 per cent of whites were killed by other whites and only 15 per cent by blacks. Mr Trump, who has made the presidential race into a riveting television spectacle, “has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone master them. He has admitted that he doesn’t prepare for debates or study briefing books; he believes such things get in the way of a good performance. No major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness,” claims Wehner. During a September 2015 campaign rally in the state of Iowa, Mr Trump made a derogatory comment about Kenyan athletes – who swept the medals’ table to beat the rest of the world at last year’s IAAF Olympics in Beijing, China – calling them cheats and con-men. “Look at them, all of them, don’t you see frauds?” But he had had more to say about Africans more broadly. On the campaign trail in Indianapolis, he lashed out at Africans, saying that they need another 100 years of recolonisation because they know nothing about leadership and self-governance. There is also his irreverent description of Africans as lazy fools who are only good at eating, lovemaking and thuggery. This says a lot about the racial attitude of a man with presidential ambitions for the US, a nuclear-laden world leader-cum-police no less. I don’t think there would be any love lost between Africans and Trump. And, while no polls have been conducted to gauge his popularity or lack of it in Africa, according to a US nationwide poll of voters by Quinnipiac University, 88 per cent of black respondents answered “no” when asked if Mr Trump “cares about the needs and problems of people like you.” But what would be the United States’ Africa policy for a Trump presidency? Perhaps it is best not to contemplate it – for now. Though it is certain realpolitik and the ways of the world would jolt him to national and international realities many believe he is yet to grasp.

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Donald Trump: What would be his likely policy for Africa?