BRING BACK OUR AFRICAN LEADERS...FROM WASHINGTON!: THE USA-AFRICA LEADERS' SUMMIT.

"Ships that pass in the night
And speak each other in passing
Only a signal shown
And a distant voice in the darkness
So, on the ocean of life
We pass and speak one another
Only a look and a voice
The darkness again and silence."
Longfellow, Tales of Wayside Inn.

INTRODUCTION

At the moment of Barack Hussein Obama's great promise, whilst standing on the cusp of presidential power after vanquishing Hillary Rodham Clinton to clinch the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, something happened, which, in hindsight, is of great relevance to the USA-Africa Leaders' Summit, which Obama has just hosted in Washington, the USA's capital, allegedly successfully.

On that occasion Newsweek magazine led with a cover story on candidate Barack Obama's future foreign policy as would-be president. The two-part story was entitled "Obama Abroad", by Fareed Zakaria, now host of CNN's Global Public Square (GPS) discussion show, and "Advice for Obama", by Timothy Garton Ash. Conspicuous by its glaring ommission in the veteran opinion formers' analyses of candidate Obama's foreign policy agenda was Africa, the continent from which Obama's father hailed.

Africa was clearly a huge diplomatic lacuna in the foreign policy thinking and planning of Obama and the American foreign policy honks around him who claimed to understand Obama's thinking on foreign policy at the time.

It was an astonishing and intriguing omission. But the omission proved prophetic as well, in the manner of speech.

The omission was to be made into policy negligence by president Barack Obama himself, after winning the White House, by paying only perfunctory attention to Africa and her many challenges. Obama made only three trips to Africa during all the six years he has been America's first African American president. And on each occasion, he seemed decidedly uncomfortable in his own presidential skin during these Africa visits, most clearly shown by his memorable, unpardonable and unforgettable "selfie" taken, in boredom, to the bemusement of the whole African continent and the consternation of his beautiful and classy wife, Michelle, with Denmark's bombshell, leggy female prime minister and the UK's slightly eccentric, if not dotty, prime minister at Nelson Mandela's memorial service in Johannesburg in December last year.

Some of us were compelled to publicly comment on this lackadaisical presidential attitude of Barack Obama towards his paternal ancestral continent of Africa during the first term of his presidency.

In the 37th volume of The Thinker magazine (edited by Dr. Essop Pahad) in 2012, this is what I wrote about what appeared to be Obama's insouciant and indolent attitude towards Africa and African issues:

"What then has been Obama's track record on Africa since he assumed the Presidency? Pretty dismal and very disappointing, I would say. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of them all has been the cold, dispassionate disposition Obama has adopted towards Africa. In a few and far-in-between occasions when President Obama devotes his time, effort and energy to African issues, he comes across as just a tough businessman who must make tough decisions, without allowing his passions and emotions to be on display or to cloud his judgment. The strange feature about the Barack Obama Presidency is that when he comes to Africa, Obama seems to retire his formidable reflective and analytical prowess, and at the same time seems determined not to allow his emotional persona to hold sway. No intellectual prowess and no jivey emotions. So on Africa Obama comes across as truly vacuous and disinterested. As a result, the Obama Presidency shows all the characteristics of a vacuous presidential Africa policy."

I wrote this two years before the USA-Africa Summit.

Has the summit changed my assessment of Obama's presidential attitude to our African continent? Has the summit imbued the Obama presidency, in the last two years remaining of his second term, with credible and considerable diplomatic elan about Africa?

Before attempting to answer that question with some degree of definitiveness, it is important to recall the prescient advice of America's other black icon and civil rights advocate, Malcolm X about how African American leaders should relate to Africa and African leaders.

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