It was boring to hear Western leaders praise Africa as the investment continent to watch for in the future when many of us who live here and experience the incompetence, dishonesty and cluelessness of Africa, its people and

US President Donald Trump gestures after being

US President Donald Trump gestures after being sworn in as President on January 20, 2017 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Mark RALSTON / AFP

In Summary

  • CNN, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, Hollywood, the gay rights movement, the nature conservation movement and the feminist movement had come to define America and the rest of the West for the last 25 years.
  • For all the focus groups, abuncance of media and political discussion in the United States, it is clear now that the political, academic, media and entertainment industry elite of America really had gotten lost in their own bubble of liberal values.

On Friday, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the US.
It was a worldwide event watched and discussed by millions of people, most still unable to believe that Trump had actually won the November 8 presidential election.
In a strident speech after he was sworn-in, President Trump made it clear that he had not been posturing during the campaign when he espoused a right-wing agenda that put America first.
He repeated that theme, emphasised it and left no doubt about his intentions.
For those who had held out the faint hope that he might moderate his views at the last minute and deliver a conciliatory address to America and the world, that hope vanished within the first minute of his address.
We must now get used to the new world order of an America led by Trump.
However, we also must examine how this most improbable of elections came to be.
For all the focus groups, abuncance of media and political discussion in the United States, it is clear now that the political, academic, media and entertainment industry elite of America really had gotten lost in their own bubble of liberal values.
CNN, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, Hollywood, the gay rights movement, the nature conservation movement and the feminist movement had come to define America and the rest of the West for the last 25 years.
We were now part of a multinational and multi-cultural global order. America and the West could no longer live in isolation. Africa could no longer be ignored. The rights of minorities were as important as the wishes of the majority.
The earth’s climate was changing mainly because of human activity and all government and business corporation planning was to take this into account.
Anybody who questioned the claims of the climate change narrative, evolution as the basis of life on earth or the idea that a man could marry another man were frowned upon as a “basket of deplorables”, to borrow Hilary Clinton’s term.
The bending over backward to appear to be politically correct became the dominant thinking of the West after the mid-1990s. Even when there was the interlude of conservative administrations under George W. Bush in the US and David Cameron in the UK, the concensus was that the social liberal way was now a permanent feature of the West.
A good conservative was one who incorporated elements of the liberal philosophy into his or her political platform. It got to the point where it was shameful for one to openly declare oneself a Christian in countries like Britain, France, Italy, Canada, the United States and Germany.
While Islam underwent a revival through the 1990s, traditionally Christian countries in Europe and North America were drifting about toward a spineless moral existence.
Many Americans and Europeans began to feel that Muslims were more welcomed by their own governments than Christians were. Slowly by slowly, the West drifted towards a kind of cultural fascism.
While free politically, in matters of entertainment, academia and social values, the West had started turning into a stiffling, conformist place.
It got to the point where when a country like Uganda, based on its traditions, religions and culture, passed a law banning homosexuality in 2014, several western governments immediately cut off aid to Uganda. Something was going to have to give. That backlash came in the form of the world’s two leading English-speaking countries, Britain and America.
It started with the June 2016 “Brexit” vote in which a referendum called to decide Britain’s future in the European Union resulted in a vote to leave that shocked the world. Watching this and seeing the consistently good performance Trump was putting on during the primary election season, many observers said America was a different, much bigger and much more complex country and Trump couldn’t possibly win.
Well, he did win and on Friday his inaugural address was more or less an announcement of an Amexit from the world stage and returning to concentrate on domestic affairs.
For those who have been speculating what Trump’s presidency means for Africa, now we know. In his maiden address as president, the only international subject Trump touched on was a declaration that under him militant Islam would be wiped off the face of the earth.
The rest of it was devoted to a bleak portrayal of an America in economic, industrial and moral decline. So Trump will concern himself with America. It will be a surprise if he bothers to visit any African country. In a way, some of us are pleased and relieved by this development. I had gotten tired of all the western political correctness and token posturing and pandering to the liberal left.
It was boring to hear Western leaders praise Africa as the investment continent to watch for in the future when many of us who live here and experience the incompetence, dishonesty and cluelessness of Africa, its people and governments know that it will be an achievement just to get Africa back to where it was in the 1960s.
The being lied to, the being patronised, the being treated like little children so weak we had to be encouraged and spoken to gently and with sympathy – that got to some of us who want Africa to be treated with the same matter-of-fact bluntness that the West treats its own governments and business corporations.
I have been wishing for the end of the 1990s political correctness that was brought on by the Bill Clinton presidency and now we have the true definition of political incorrectness in Donald Trump.
After Trump leaves the scene, the liberal left will hopefully have learnt its lesson and will learn to listen more respectfully to the common man in western democracies.
If in a democracy every man and woman has the vote and the right to use it, then one has to listen carefully to them. You might dismiss them as “racist” and ignorant, but then there will come a time when they decide to make their voice heard as we saw in America and Britain.
For the next four years, so shattered will the American establishment be by the Trump presidency that social issues like gay marriage that the Obama administration had tried to shove down the throat of Africa will be forgotten.