The phrase “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch” is often attributed to the celebrated American President Ronald Reagan. He is said to have responded with that statement when asked about why America was propping up dictator Mobutu Sese Seko against the will of the people of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). This statement has been applied to many other leaders as it has been “the soundtrack of our [American] foreign policy for a century.” It has informed the structural relationship between America (and Western Europe, as well) and Africa since independence in the mid-20th century, the only exception being the soon-to-come-to-an-end Trump administration.
American foreign policy toward Africa has generally been a two-pronged, if not bipolar, approach. On the one hand, there is a callous militarism that seems fixated on maintaining spheres of geostrategic influence for resource exploitation and consumer markets, both at the behest of corporate interests.
Instability (wars) or stability can be tools to achieve these foreign policy objectives, depending on the circumstances. Following the independence of most African countries, this militarism was justified as a result of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, as they tried to outdo each other in the search for spheres of influence. As such, the Cold War was the cradle of the “sons of bitches,” some of whom were happy to call themselves bastards and saw no offense in it as long as it served their interest for power.
But American foreign policy is designed to be bipolar. After the fall of the Soviet empire, the 1990s brought change in form rather than substance. The victor couldn’t contain its triumphalist urge to spread democracy and capitalism, as it understood them, around the world. In any case, misguided “democratisation” and ruinous economic austerity embodied this triumphalism.
America’s support for its sons of bitches was superficially conditioned on elections every five years. The result was “elections without democracy” and “constitutions without constitutionalism”. This “democratic process” of periodic elections replaced coups as America’s tool for replacing unruly “bastards”: America would wink and look the other way while “friendly” bastards stole elections and intimidated those who opposed them, while sanctioning “unfriendly and uncooperative” bastards for rigging elections. All in all, the structure of the relationship has remained the same since the 1960s, except that the sophistication of “democracy” in the early 1990s – i.e. regular elections as defined by those with a stake in the outcome of those elections – only provided cover for laundering the status quo.
Moreover, a soft power approach of humanitarian aid for poverty alleviation complements America’s acquiescence in this callous search for “sons of bitches” in utter disregard for the African people. Both humanitarian aid and democracy promotion serve two purposes. One, the pretence of promoting democracy reassures the average American that his or her government is a force for good in the world, protecting their innocence from America’s callous foreign policy. Second, America’s perceived good intentions allow it to get away with “collateral damage” that requires no accountability. America’s foreign policy therefore protects the innocence of ordinary Americans and shields its implementers from moral and legal accountability. It makes everyone a moral agent – pure genius!
In addition to the sense of moral agency that America’s soft power gives to Americans at home, the ordinary American receives a psychological shot in the arm at every encounter with the beneficiaries of America’s goodness – ‘From the American People’, USAID’s emblem reads. In interaction, therefore, the beneficiary comes into contact with a person whose goodness is imbued, self-evident, and needs no proof. It’s the equivalent of a Christian’s long-awaited physical encounter with Christ.
But on the other side of the encounter with generosity personified is hopelessness personified, the kind that cannot be cured by solutions from within. It’s a vote of no confidence that conveys the message of ineptitude, emotional absence and uselessness of African leaders, a message that doesn’t always correspond to reality but is necessary to validate the relationship between charity and exploitation. At once, the contact between the American and the African blinds both to the possibility of why poverty persists: that it is the sons of bitches who maintain the relationship between charity and hopelessness, and that without them Africans could elect leaders who would prioritise their needs.
This is where ignorance and innocence meet. In other words, Africa’s leadership crisis since independence has much to do with a mutually reinforcing structural defect that creates generosity on one side of the relationship and hopelessness on the other. The likes of USAID and DFID, as well as many other pro-democracy NGOs, represent how this structure manifests itself across Africa: it is based on the condescending idea that it is possible to fight poverty and have good governance without necessarily letting Africans choose the leaders they want. In other words, generosity is a substitute for African agency. It’s a foreign policy that suggests that the wound shouldn’t be healed because it would make the bandage unnecessary, yet the survival of the bandage manufacturers depends on it.
Therefore, the pretence of promoting democracy and humanitarianism lures Africans into accepting America’s intentions at face value.
Our son of a bitch in the White House
It has been perplexing to many that President Donald Trump has African supporters. Much of the bewilderment is grounded in the idea that he has been a bad American president, a racist who has stoked racial tensions and held black people in contempt at home and abroad. This is true. After all, Trump has referred to African countries as “shithole”. Trump is a son of a bitch for doing and saying all these things. But since African independence, no American president has attempted to change America’s bipolar foreign policy towards Africa, which commits Africa to charity by preventing people from choosing the leaders they want through diplomatic and military support. Apart from Egypt’s General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi – for reasons to do with Israel – it is difficult to find any African leader who has felt reassured by having Trump’s full support, for example.
At the explicit policy level, Trump’s foreign policy pivot to Africa, while intended as a counterpoint to contain growing Chinese influence, sought to pivot away from a pro-democracy, anti-poverty mindset towards trade, investment and infrastructure development through the $60 billion US International Development Finance Corp, launched in October 2018.
The pivot, the first since independence, signalled that the agency for solutions to democracy and poverty could be in the hands of Africans, who could elect leaders of their choice. And while there was no prospect of a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship – since African leaders who refused to give preferential treatment to US corporations were likely to suffer consequences similar to those in Bolivia and Venezuela – there was at least the possibility of awakening Africans to the extent of their exploitation: to awaken African consciousness against exploitation.
Most importantly, Trump removed all pretence and pretext that American foreign policy is about defending democracy and human rights. In doing so, he disarmed democracy advocates and humanitarians. By removing other pretexts, he unwittingly empowered those who saw an opportunity to mobilise Africans against their own economic exploitation, where democracy and humanitarianism, like a sedative, demobilised many and led them to believe that America wanted what’s best for them.
Naturally, these democracy promoters were hostile to Africans – because they think they know better what Africans need, the after-effects of post-1980s triumphalism interwoven with the DNA of exceptionalism – who wished Trump success in the hope that he could win a second term to further his foreign policy pivot. They charged that such Africans didn’t wish well for Americans. But to suggest that these Africans don’t wish well for Americans implies that Americans who refuse to see the perniciousness of their foreign policy don’t wish well for Africans. The fact that Americans have developed mechanisms to protect their innocence is no excuse. Indeed, the tragedy is that not many Africans have the kind of clarity about America that Americans have about Africa, which explains why the status quo has been maintained. Since independence, the structural relationship between America and Africa has remained the same, with a few cosmetic changes here and there, while retaining its substantive aspects of preserving its unpopular sons of bitches and mitigating the effects of unwanted dictators through the soft power of democracy-promoting and poverty-fighting NGOs.
Trump may have been a son of a bitch for Americans, but he was “our” son of a bitch.
