Politicians of all stripes and world leaders from around the globe are rushing to condemn President Donald Trump for his alleged reference to “shithole countries,” made during a negotiation with Democrats in the Oval Office on Thursday.
Africa is no exception. An official from South Africa’s ruling party insisted: “Ours is not a shithole country, neither is Haiti or any other country in distress.”
But a few Africans voiced their support for Trump.
The Associated Press reported:
“President Donald Trump is absolutely right,” says Mamady Traore, a 30-year-old sociologist in the West African nation of Guinea. “When you have heads of state who mess with the constitutions to perpetuate their power. When you have rebel factions that kill children, disembowel women as saints, who mutilate innocent civilians.”
One African source reached by Breitbart News on Friday said that Trump had only said what many Africans say behind closed doors — at least about the continent’s most troubled nations.
“The Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe are ‘shitholes’ — run by assholes,” the source said.
In 2000, the satirical website The Onion — which then still published a print newspaper — satirized the alternative perspectives of a liberal college student on the one hand, and a resident of Nigeria on the other, in a “point-counterpoint” titled, “Nigeria May Be A Developing Nation, But It Is Rich In Culture vs. Get Me Out Of This Godforsaken Hellhole.”
However, many Africans are furious, and offended, at Trump’s reported remarks, seeing them as a prime example of racist Western attitudes. Botswana, one of the most successful African countries, summoned the U.S. ambassador to receive an official complaint.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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