"These days, well-behaved African heads of state are rewarded by Barack Obama with the chance to meet with him in groups of four and have their picture taken with him. It’s like meeting Beyonce, but you get to call it a state visit. That’s what happened on Friday when Malawi’s Joyce Banda, Senegal’s Macky Sall, Cape Verde’s José Maria Neves and Sierra Leone’s Ernest Bai Koroma were paraded before the White House press corps, sitting in star-struck silence as Barack reeled off a kind of wikipedia-level roll-call of their accomplishments. They beamed like competition winners. It was all very feudal. You get the sense that they were given a nice White House tote bag, perhaps a signed copy of Dreams from my Father, and were then patted on the head and sent off to inconsequential NGO-led roundtables. Presumably the thinking is that being thus sprinkled with all-American stardust plays well back home. (Joyce Banda has already boasted of being the first Malawian president invited to the White House, perhaps forgetting that Kamuzu was a master of political theater and would never have allowed himself to be wheeled out as somebody else’s prop.) The wider symbolism is unmistakeable: These guys, Obama is saying, work for me. African visitors (unlike all other heads of state) can be received in groups, and, as they’re all Africans, don’t need to be spoken to individually. Politics? Negotiations? They’re just happy to be here."
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 05:10:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015