From s***holes to summits

To call Mogadishu 'garbage' while extolling Botswana's diamonds in the same sentence is not diplomacy; it is duplicity

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Insolent: US President Donald Trump's contempt for Africans is an intentional act of humiliation, designed to denigrate them, strip them of dignity and exploit African leaders. Graphic: Supplied

(Graphic: Supplied)

of disrespect for what it is: a calculated strategy of domination cloaked in the language of partnership. To accept hypocrisy uncritically is to surrender agency in the global arena.

The time has come to confront this contradiction with intellectual ferocity, to demand respect not as charity but as a condition of engagement and to remind the world that Africa is not a prop in America’s theatre of power; it is a continent whose dignity is nonnegotiable.

The Washington Accord is not a triumph of diplomacy; it is a symptom of Africa’s deeper malaise: the persistence of client states that cloak their domestic despotism in the veneer of Western approval. These regimes, eager to curry favour with Washington, sacrifice continental agency at the altar of foreign validation. Rwanda's entanglement in the DRC's affairs is not merely a matter of regional politics; it is a blatant violation of sovereignty and a destabilising force in Central Africa, yet, instead of confronting this reality with courage, African presidents bowed before Trump, legitimising his role as arbiter of African peace while surrendering their own authority.

The spectacle of former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s attendance at the signing, coupled with the discreet meeting between Presidents William Ruto and Paul Kagame, exposes the selfish calculus of African leadership. These leaders prioritise private bargains with Western powers over the collective dignity and independence of the continent. This betrayal of unity is not new; it is a recurring pattern that has long undermined Africa’s quest for self-determination, leaving the continent fractured and vulnerable to external manipulation.