Following president Trump’s remarks of allegedly referring to African countries as shithole during an Oval office meeting concerning immigration and his desire to have less people from them but would rather have immigrants from countries like Norway, African based groups and governments have given statements condemning this act and insisting of the dignity of African countries. In fact some African governments have allegedly summoned US diplomats in their countries to get closure for example, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa with other countries expected to follow suit.
The African Union too that represents the African countries plus African ambassadors to the US have come out vocally to defend their continent against the insult shithole that the US president allegedly used to refer to them.
It should be noted that the countries affected are the poor and black countries which largely constitutes the entire African continent since the president’s dislike for the Muslim countries is not a secret which constitutes the northern part of the African continent. This involves Haiti too and Haitians leaving in Florida staged a demonstration outside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago hotel.
What came after was people from the shithole countries taking to social media capturing some of the beauty in these countries so as to contradict Trump’s alleged bad words. These included celebrities and non-celebrities with the musician Snoop Dog capturing himself on video saying something about moving to Uganda, an East African country which got the locals excited.
The winner of Africa’s next top model cycle 1, Aamito Lagum which was headed by Nigeria’s super model Oluchi also joined the solidarity by capturing the beauty of the Nile River from her home country Uganda contradicting Trump’s claims.
Coincidentally this happened a few days after a young African model was made to model a hoodie with the remarks the coolest monkey in the jungle by the H&M clothing stores. This caused an uproar on social media with angry protesters who saw it as racist and sympathisers who said monkey is in fact a term of endearment. This caused protesters to attack six H&M stores in South Africa with celebrities like the Weeknd cutting ties with the store and Puff Daddy allegedly offered the boy a 1 million dollar modelling contract.
As the world debates on whether the president of the most powerful state is racist and whether he made these remarks concerning Africa, professional translation services must have been in play here as every country tried to dissect and understand president Trump’s message each in their own language.
By Angela Kyolaba