The UN General Assembly – Trump and the memories of Ghadafi and Mugabe By Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is usually a theatre of regurgitated cliches. Leaders take turns repeating familiar bromides about peace, sustainable development and cooperation, while their diplomats sneak out for coffee. Yet every so often the stage is hijacked by performers who understand that the Assembly, stripped of its solemnity, is really a stage. For decades Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya supplied the fireworks. Then, years after their exits, Ogbeni Donald Trump picked up the script and turned Assembly into reality television.
Mugabe was the schoolmaster of defiance. His clipped diction could transform a dry lecture into an incendiary sermon. The man was gifted with oratory dexterity. In 2003, furious at America’s invasion of Iraq, he thundered: “Mr Bush and Mr Blair are the two leaders who are the greatest terrorists in the world.” Delegates gasped, then chuckled. On another occasion he declared, “Zimbabwe will never, never, never be a colony again,” wagging his finger as though chastising a naughty child. Even his critics admitted that he had a knack for drawing global attention to the hypocrisies of the powerful. For many Africans, his speeches were less about Zimbabwe’s plight than about sticking a rhetorical finger in the eye of the West. He was truly an African leader and since he exited the stage, no one from Africa came close to his guts.
Gaddafi, by contrast, was theatre incarnate. His first and only UNGA address in 2009 was meant to last 15 minutes. It sprawled into a 96-minute ramble. Dressed in resplendent desert robes, he shuffled papers, muttered conspiracies, and at one point tore up a copy of the UN Charter, declaring: “This is the Security Council—terrorist security, not security for us. It should be called the terrorism council.” He opined the UN headquarters be moved to Beijing or Delhi, away from New York’s “pollution.” He demanded investigations into the assassination of John F. Kennedy and speculated that swine flu was a man-made weapon.
At times his rhetoric tipped into the absurd. He once mused, “Why is Obama called a son of Africa? Is he not also a son of America?” Diplomats snickered, journalists scribbled furiously, and television viewers at home marvelled at the unhinged spectacle. Gaddafi was less head of state than wandering prophet, mixing grievance with theatre. Bizarre though he was, he made the UNGA unmissable.
When both men departed the stage—Mugabe into maturation, Gaddafi into a ditch outside Sirte—the Assembly heaved a sigh of relief. Without its two firebrands, the hall reverted to droning predictability. Speeches blurred into interchangeable refrains about “shared humanity” and “inclusive growth.” The UNGA became what it was designed to be: predictable, safe, and dull.
Then came Donald Trump.
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From his debut in 2017, Trump resurrected the Mugabe-Gaddafi tradition of turning the chamber into a theatre of confrontation. Where his predecessors spoke in the measured cadence of professors, Trump used the blunt diction of a tabloid headline. “The United States has great strength and patience,” he warned, “but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” He then christened Kim Jong-un “Rocket Man.” Diplomats gasped, some laughed nervously.
A year later, he opened his speech with the usual braggadocio, “My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” The hall choked in laughter. Trump paused, smirked, and deadpanned: “I didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay.” In a chamber where laughter is usually suppressed, it was a moment of absurdity worthy of Gaddafi himself.
His latest outburst has returned that same energy. From the rostrum, Trump derided what he called “the double standards of the global elites” and accused unnamed powers of fuelling endless wars. He dismissed climate diplomacy as “a hoax, a con game, designed to enrich bureaucrats while shackling workers.” Diplomats shifted in their seats; some applauded politely, others stared at their shoes. The substance mattered less than the spectacle. The Assembly, once again, was on edge. Gimba Kakanda when asked by Fatima Zahra how he survived the Trump onslaught, Gimba summised thus’ we listened to him like school children ‘!
The parallels are striking. Mugabe railed against colonial arrogance; Gaddafi against Western conspiracies; Trump against the very multilateral institutions America once built. Mugabe declared Bush and Blair terrorists; Gaddafi declared the Security Council a gang of outlaws; Trump sneers that NATO allies are freeloaders and that climate negotiators are frauds. All three understood the value of provocation.
The difference, of course, is context. Mugabe and Gaddafi were outsiders, using the stage to vent against a system that excluded them. Trump, by contrast, is the insider, the leader of the world’s most powerful country, who trashes the very system his predecessors designed. When Gaddafi accused the Security Council of being terrorists, diplomats rolled their eyes; when Trump mocks climate accords or threatens to pull funding from the UN, the consequences feel rather less theatrical.
Still, they all belong to the same lineage of political theatre. Most leaders treat the UNGA as a platform for polite irrelevance. A few—Mugabe, Gaddafi, Trump—understand that the world is watching, and that provocation plays better than platitudes. They spoke not to the dignitaries in the chamber but to the masses outside it: Mugabe to an African audience hungry for defiance, Gaddafi to Libyans enthralled by his eccentricity, Trump to Americans who relish his combativeness.
The irony is that in mocking the Assembly, they made it relevant. For a body designed to embody harmony, its most memorable moments are not those of consensus but of theatre. Mugabe’s barbs, Gaddafi’s ramblings, Trump’s insults—each in their way reminded the world that politics, like drama, depends on conflict.
In an age of scripted speeches, the UNGA still owes its most compelling moments to its unruly showmen. And we continue to miss late Ghadafi and Mugabe as Oga Trump help to sustain the rhythm.
Memorably musing
