I would like to thank US President Donald Trump for making the countries we originally came from, look normal. People in the West used to make fun of dictators around the world, for behaving wildly and not paying attention to the rule of law. Some of our peers used to laugh at us when they learnt we were from Africa, portraying us as beasts who were living in a jungle.
Thanks to Trump, who is now behaving like some of our leaders, we can now raise our heads and be normal, once and for all. He has demonstrated that we are all humans, whether we are from New York, US or Mogadishu, Somalia, as our politicians are prone to overstepping boundaries and acting as dictators. Even in the US, leaders like the ones we were used to, and have run away from, can exist.
Ironically, it makes me proud to say, probably for the first time, in my native country of Somalia, there was a clean election, where the defeated president accepted his loss honourably, and handed power over to his opponent.
Even in the US, this didn’t happen during a trying rift between Al Gore and former US President George W. Bush, which nearly tore the country apart. The peaceful transition would not have likely occurred in the land of the free, had Trump been defeated.
With the rise of right-wing parties around the world, we are probably witnessing a new chapter of history in the making, where the tables are being turned. Perhaps Africa will, one day, be a rolemodel as the West succumbs to divisive leadership, reminiscent of what we once used to live with.
- The reader is a freelance writer based in Toronto, Canada.
