FORGET what everyone tells you—the only foreign view that really matters to many powerful people in Africa is America’s—loved and loathed on the continent in equal measure.

Despite what the media might have you think, a lot of diplomacy—the boiler room stuff— goes on well out of sight. And while by day Africa loves taking a pop at the US these days, though they have largely given the incumbent president Barack Obama a pass—the continent’s leaders cavort with its envoys by night, when big deals—both economic and geopolitical—are struck.

Because when all is said and done, what remains is that everything is all about interests.   

As part of diplomacy training at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), American envoys often narrate their experiences in the course of advancing their country’s interests and helping shape world history.

Through a special public-private partnership with the FSI, which includes advising US foreign service personnel on how to publish their experiences, the independent nonprofit Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, keeps records.

The recollections make for riveting reading, more so the entries on Africa—from which we learnt a few things: 
[b]Nigeria’s Moshood Abiola suffered a heart attack while meeting with US diplomats
Following Sani Abacha’s death from a heart attack in 1998, the general who succeeded him, Abdulsalami Abubakar, allowed Thomas Pickering, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, and Assistant Secretary Susan Rice (today Obama’s National Security Adviser), to see the incarcerated Moshood Abiola.

Abiola, a businessman and philanthropist, had been jailed by Abacha in 1993 when he appeared to have won the popular vote in the election, with the ballot then annulled.

Together with US ambassador Bill Twaddell, Abiola and Rice drank tea from the same teapot—important because the Americans were initially suspected of poisoning him through the tea. Pickering recalls that Abiola “suddenly became quite incoherent and distracted and didn’t seem to understand what we were saying…”

He asked to use the washroom, and then came out without his shirt on—“unusual for a Muslim man in the presence of a woman [who wasn’t his wife]. Abiola then sat on couch, slumped down and slid on the floor.”

Efforts to resuscitate him at the presidential clinic failed, and the American envoys had to work their socks off to avoid being left carrying the bag over the death of an immensely popular man, including summoning internationally-renowned forensics officers and appearing at a series of press conferences detailing what had happened.

The autopsies found that Abiola had died of massive heart failure. [/b]
Robert Mugabe has not always been anti-US
The antipathy by the Zimbabwe leader towards the West is well documented, but it has not always been so. Between 1980-2000 Mugabe oversaw a country that was a political and economic leader in Africa, including being a breadbasket for most of its neighbours and exports of tobacco only second to the US. 

In 1991 Zimbabwe replaced Ivory Coast on the UN Security Council, worrying president George H.W. Bush who felt that due to Mugabe’s friendship with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein under the Non-Aligned Movement, he would vote against the US waging war with Iraq. Under this context, Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen travelled to Harare to get Mugabe’s support.

“In view of his Non-Aligned leadership, I expected to be thoroughly harangued. I made my pitch and waited for Mugabe’s hammer,” Cohen says.

“[But] he thought for a while and then made a response that blew me away: ‘Secretary Cohen, I don’t approve of strong powers invading and occupying weaker powers. Iraq must be forced out of Kuwait. Tell President Bush that I am fully on his side on this question.’ Wow! That was an unexpected surprise.”

Mugabe was true to his word, and his intelligence services even intercepted Iraqi assassins who had arrived in the Zimbabwean capital to reportedly kill the US ambassador, with the additional bonus of delivering them into waiting US hands in Cyprus.

Mugabe also was key in convincing Mozambique’s RENAMO leader, Afonso Dhlakama, with whom they share the same Shona heritage, to enter politics, a task that had totally eluded the US, and leading to the vital 1992 peace deal in Rome.

Ethiopia: Haile Selassie was deposed in a ‘creeping coup’
Few figures are as central to the shape of the pan-African unity as Haile Selassie, whose country remained a symbol of African independence all through his long reign. In the end he ruled for too long, and while single-handedly hauling his country into modernity, he ultimately lost to the same intellectual forces he had created space for.


Emperor Haile Selassie (centre) with Ato Tedla Bairu, Chief Executive of Eritrea on 11 September, 1952. At left, the Empress of Ethiopia. (Photo/UN)

Americans working at the embassy between 1962-66 give us a glimpse of what the emperor was like:

He was a mixture of both authoritarianism and benevolence, but regarded himself as an emperor, not a king, and held court regally, including personally handing out pieces of gold to those seeking his help.
He modernised public education and the system of government, but retained total control in a feudal manner, despite American attempts to talk him into full land reforms. He shifted ministers and governors frequently to avoid them building up power bases, and at one time had four intelligence systems at the same time to spy on everyone and each other.
Realising the strength of the African independence movement, he cleverly brought African leaders, including many regional enemies, together and persuaded them to sign the OAU charter, which he had modelled on that of the Organisation of American States. He ended as the continent’s “father figure”.
But a 1960 coup attempt punctured the aura of mystique that had seen his subjects view him as God. Rifts in the military and security forces were then exposed, among other simmering social cleavages. 
He made the miscalculation that a pesky insurgency in Eritrea would never amount to much. 
He established a university in opposition to the wishes of the nobility, but this led to young students being radicalised and seeking a change to democracy. The 1960 coup had wide support from both university students and graduates who had gone abroad including to military schools—a programme he sponsored.
The US embassy tried hard to get him to abdicate in favour of his son when it became clear he was struggling with age. He did even not protest American plans to leave the Kagnew station, a military base in Asmara that was key for US interest in Ethiopia—and it is felt the drawdown in 1977 allowed the revolution to spiral out of control.  
Army units sent representatives, many of them radicals, to Addis Ababa initially to present their grievances to the emperor…but sensing the weakening centre they formed the “Derg” or committee. It was a slow “creeping” coup unlike what other African countries at the time experience. By the last days the Derg were running the country, having successfully exploited the vacuum. 
[b]Kenya’s Moi was ‘corrupt to his soul’
The tough-as-nails Prudence Bushnell was posted to Nairobi in 1996, much to Kenya’s president Daniel arap Moi’s acute displeasure.  “Initially, he [Moi] wouldn’t see me. I was the second consecutive woman ambassador [after Aurelia Brazeal], and Moi was not at all pleased to have another female,” Bushnell recalls. 

She was the third woman in the most recent four US ambassadors to Kenya, interrupted only by the scrappy Smith Hempstone.

“Moi was convinced that the US Government was intentionally sending him women as a message that he was just not good enough to merit a white male,” Bushnell, who once walked out on Liberia’s Charles Taylor for  repeatedly calling her “my dear” (it turned out Taylor called almost everyone that), she later said.

But they eventually started to have discussions as a precedent. She recalled some of their interactions:

‘He would fly into tantrums sometimes, or just get mad and cranky. I’d bring him up straight by asking point blank, “Why are you yelling at me?”

Once I stopped an argument in mid-stream and asked if he enjoyed fighting with me. “Yes,” he responded, “I am a democrat.” I think he rather enjoyed our interchanges…. ‘

She says Moi believed he was loved by his people, having surrounded himself with sycophants, but he had his value to the US—in the Cold War he was in the American corner, playing off Washington and Moscow deftly, and his aspirations to be a regional statesman came in handy, where he intervened with Somalia’s warlords and in Sudan, and would even talk to Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko on America’s behalf.

One time, in an attempt to rein in the regime’s rampant corruption, the US voted no to a crucial $100 million World Bank loan to the energy sector, generating a lot of attention.

The only way out was by channelling the money through a private sector bank for transparency. Moi and Bushnell met at his private residence to sort out the problem.

The diplomat recalled: 

He said to me, “If I agree to this it’s going to set a precedent, and I’m worried.

I said, “You’re right, it will and I’d be worried about it too if I were you, because it means doing business differently.”

He said, “I don’t want to do business differently.”

And I said, “Then you’re not going to get the money. There you are, Mr President, you need to choose. I know life is unfair and this doesn’t seem good and right, but you need to understand our perspective and you have a choice to make. That’s what leaders do, they make difficult decisions.”

He called me after I got home, about an hour later and said, “I’ve decided to do it.” And I said, “Good for you, Mr President, you’ve made the right choice.”

“I felt like a life coach.”[/b]
http://m.mgafrica.com/article/2016-01-21-tales-about-africa-by-us-diplomats

Summaries plz

chris4gold:
Summaries plz

Even harry porter no long reach dis one

The U.S delegates poisoned him. That Lady called Rice.

Slikbae:
The U.S delegates poisoned him. That Lady called Rice.

That Susan Rice na she-devil.

I think Nelson Mandela was MKO's mentor......He wanted to be president of Nigeria....

Slikbae:
The U.S delegates poisoned him. That Lady called Rice.

Why would she poison him?

ta4ba3:



Even harry porter no long reach dis one

but u watch harry potter finish almost 3 hrs but u no fit read this one . Black man

Abiola and Abachas case is like 2pac and biggie.........they didn't just die like that,they where assassinated......these are the pecks of calling a white man your friend!!

meccuno:
but u watch harry potter finish almost 3 hrs but u no fit read this one . Black man

Dats Cuz action is better than words

I don't know. people are killed/assassinated everyday for different reasons. I know they both drank from the same flask. it was a twin flask. He was served the poisoned drink, just moments before she had drank from the "unpoisoisned" part.
that's what I read.

Zico0:

Why would she poison him?