It doesn't happen too often that I wish I had been in a colleague's place, but watching BBC's Matt Frei interviewing US-president Bush on his country's African policy, I did. George W. Bush is visiting the African continent, all-in-all his second visit during his entire term of office, and the BBC interviewed him for the occasion. So many questions remained unposed. Bush painted a gloomy, one-sided picture of Africa as a place where people are 'suffering from disease and hunger and hopelessnes'. And Frei let him ramble on about the 'paternalistic effort of mercy' the American people are acquired to undertake, especially for Darfur. But why didn't he ask about the suffering people of Somalia who were plummeted back into lawlessnes after a US-backed Ethiopian attack to throw the Islamic courts out? Or about the role America's favourite African country Rwanda is playing in the ever lasting war in Eastern Congo? Why wasn't there any mention of Africom, the US military base that the Bush administration is trying to ram down Africa's throat? Because obviously there was no African policy to speak of before the United States realized that Africa could be, and had been, a hiding place for terrorists. I did talk about these issues when I was interviewed for Dutch national radio about Bush visiting Africa, but I would have loved to ask president Bush these questions myself...
