Until US President Donald Trump and his deputy, JD Vance, publicly berated and humiliated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on February 28, 2025, one had to look back 64 years to find a moment nearly as dramatic.
On October 12, 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in a fit of rage, banged his shoe on a desk during a United Nations General Assembly session in New York. It was a piece of Cold War theatre, symbolising East-West tensions in a way no diplomatic event ever could.
Khrushchev was reacting to a speech by Filipino delegate Lorenzo Sumulong, who accused the Soviet Union, now a diminished Russia, of denying Eastern Europe the freedoms it claimed to champion. The Soviet leader, already notorious for his volcanic temper, erupted. He stood up, waved his arms, and shouted in Russian. Then, he did something that would become legendary: he removed his shoe and hammered it on the Soviet delegation’s desk. Gasps, laughter, and confusion ensued. UN President Frederick Boland banged his gavel so forcefully to restore order that it broke.
Yet, for all its drama, Khrushchev’s outburst pales beside the humiliation Trump and Vance inflicted on Zelenskyy under the glare of television cameras. European leaders, stunned by the spectacle, rushed to offer Zelenskyy heroic treatment. Some African commentators remarked that perhaps they should feel affronted by what happened—because that is how African leaders are often treated.
In other words, on that February day in Washington, DC, Zelenskyy became an African leader.
Most diplomatic humiliations occur behind closed doors. Unless they spill into public view, accounts of them are often disputed. In July 1958, Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, visited the United States to meet President Dwight D Eisenhower. Some reports suggest Eisenhower, uninterested in Africa’s first independent leader, kept Nkrumah waiting too long and delegated substantive discussions to subordinates. However, declassified US State Department records reveal no significant delay. The insult, if it occurred, was one of tone rather than timing.
In November 2017, at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, French President Emmanuel Macron stood alongside President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. When a student asked about electricity shortages, Macron smirked and retorted, “You’re speaking as if I’m the president of Burkina Faso!” When Kaboré briefly left the room, Macron quipped, “He’s gone to fix the air conditioning!”
Macron thought he was being witty. Burkina Faso and the rest of Africa disagreed. The comments, captured on video, were widely viewed as patronising.
On July 26, 2007, in Dakar, Senegal, French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivered a speech that would go down in history for all the wrong reasons. Standing before Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, Sarkozy declared:
“The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history… The African peasant only lives with the rhythm of the seasons.”
His words were widely condemned as racist. Wade, ever the statesman, maintained his composure.
In June 2003, South African President Thabo Mbeki was in Washington, DC, for talks with President George W Bush. At a press conference, Bush abruptly interrupted him, steering the discussion towards America’s HIV/Aids initiative (Pepfar). South Africans were incensed. Bush had treated Mbeki not as an equal leader but as a junior partner.
Perhaps the most blatant humiliation of an African leader came on June 30, 1960, at the Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence ceremony. Belgian King Baudouin, standing stiffly in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), delivered a speech praising Belgium’s “civilising mission,” glossing over the brutality of its colonial rule.
Then came Patrice Lumumba. The new Congolese Prime Minister was not on the official programme, but he seized the microphone and delivered a thunderous rebuttal, demanding dignity and justice for his people. Within months, Lumumba was gone, assassinated with Belgian and US backing.
Sometimes, though, African leaders turn the tables and create awkward moments themselves. Few do it better than Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni. At the 2017 World Health Assembly in Geneva, Museveni stood before an audience including Western health officials and leaders and decided to lecture them on transparency—with a fart joke: “In my village, when someone farts, you cannot hide it. Everybody knows who did it because the smell gives it away. That’s how transparency should be — you can’t cover it up, and it’s better that way.”
The author is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans.” X (Twitter) @cobbo3
