Opinion: Firing top envoy on trip confirmation of Trump's dislike for Africa?

Powerful people live in Washington DC, a big compromise city stuck in between the states of Virginia and Maryland. It is the capital of the United States and the political nerve centre for the Conceptual West and so whatever happens in it attracts wide global attention, even if it is mundane. Holders of particular offices, especially secretaries of state, wield power that makes them dominant on the world stage.

Presidents do not humiliate the secretary of state through the un-ceremonial path of public firing, but Donald Trump is not usual. He did it to oil man Rex Tillerson, then in Nairobi on mission to sell the American agenda to skeptical audiences that were still smarting over Trump’s foul language.

Washington has all types of “experts” advising the government on what to do to whom, and some of them seemingly love advising on Kenya. It is a land of contrasting images whether in environment or in unpredictable political dynamism.

In colonial times, it acquired the image of being both an earthly paradise for Euro settlers as well as that of rough anti-colonial uprising that upset settler comfort, the Mau Mau War.

In post-colonial times, it became key country in Africa for multiple Cold War confrontations by extra-continental forces. It also attracted attention not simply because it has good athletes but also because it produced famous politicians whose global presence could not be ignored.

COLD WAR

When it came to Kenya, there were at least two types of Cold War, operating virtually simultaneously. First was the big Cold War, generally between the Euros in the capitalistic Conceptual West led by the United States on one side and the socialistic Conceptual East led by the Soviet Union on the other.

Second were the lesser Cold Wars, within each of the two sides, as supposed allies undercut and tried to discredit each other before various imperial subjects. In effort to project individual influence at the global level, especially to Africans, they questioned the commitment and competence of their ideological allies.

The lesser Cold War was especially pronounced between the declining Britons and the post-World War II assertive and rich Americans. The two competed to control the post-colonial future by grooming potential leaders; education was one of the tools.

A few Kenyans stood out as symbols of both the big and the lesser Cold War. They included Tom Mboya and Ali Mazrui, champions of Western thinking and also symbols of Anglo-American rivalry in Africa. The British had identified and groomed Mboya as a future young African leader only for the Americans to “steal” him to the chagrin of Mergery Perham at Oxford. She then went out of her way to ensure that the Americans would not “steal” brilliant student Mazrui. Oxford set Mazrui’s intellectual rocket partly to stop Princeton. Of the two brilliant Kenyans, Mboya’s geopolitical impact was bigger than Mazrui’s because he inadvertently succeeded in giving Americans a president who angers some Americans.

TWEETING INSULTS

When in 1968 US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy predicted that there would be a “Negro” US president in 40 years, he had no idea that his family and his Kenyan friend, Mboya, would partly be responsible for that likelihood. Mboya’s inspiration led an adventurous Kenyan to find his way to Hawaii in 1959, take classes at the University of Hawaii, and most important, increase the American population by one in 1961. The one, Barrack Obama, became president in 2009. For giving the United States a black president, what Hillary Clinton once described as a son of Kenya, Donald Trump has little liking for Kenya.

He showed that dislike by firing Tillerson while the latter was in Nairobi rather than in Washington. Trump’s 13 month relationship with Tillerson became frosty within six months as the two publicly exchanged un-pleasantries. The parting was a matter of timing to suit Trump’s tantalising mischief, carefully choosing the moment and place to humiliate Tillerson. Part of Tillerson’s job was to clean up the subsequent diplomatic mess. Tillerson did not have assistant secretaries of state for either Latin America or Africa even as he set out for conciliatory tours to the two regions. Kenya was on the conciliatory tour list.

Usual “experts” in Washington tried to advise him, telling him to be rough on the Kenya government. He made routine statements warning Africa about the Chinese and advising Africans on what not do. Monica Juma replied that Kenya is capable of making its own decisions. In Nairobi, he tried to understand Africa only for Trump in Washington to disorient him with the public firing. Trump had waited for Tillerson to be in Kenya, home of Barack Obama’s ancestry, to do the humiliating deed on his secretary of state.