HARARE - President Barack Obama will exclude President Robert Mugabe when he invites 47 leaders to a landmark US-Africa summit in August, seeking to widen US trade, development and security ties with an increasingly dynamic continent to which he traces part of his ancestry.
Obama will send out invites to all African nations that are currently in good standing with the United States or are not suspended from the African Union — meaning there will be no place for states like Egypt or Zimbabwe.
Since 2000, America has engaged Zimbabwe in a bitter diplomatic row, characterised by threats, sanctions and verbal exchanges over a deteriorating human rights situation and rising repression.
Obama will hold the talks on August 5 and 6, seeking to cement progress from his trip to Africa last year.
A White House statement says the trip will “advance the administration’s focus on trade and investment in Africa, and highlight America’s commitment to Africa’s security, its democratic development, and its people.”
The idea for the summit, which takes place with Washington increasingly aware of China’s attempt to enhance its diplomatic profile in Africa, was first announced by Obama in a speech in Cape Town in June.
Egypt, which has caused the Obama administration to thread a foreign policy needle with an erstwhile ally after a military takeover, is not eligible to attend as it is currently suspended from the African Union.
The United States maintains sanctions against Mugabe and key officials over suppression of democracy and what Washington sees as politically-motivated violence.
Despite its hostility, threats and sanctions, American policy makers still recognise the importance of Zimbabwe in contemporary southern African geo-politics, a vital area of Western economic investment and vital resources.
The US’s “narrowly targeted sanctions,” were imposed on specific high level individuals and their families in Zimbabwe, accused of undermining democracy and crushing the Zimbabwean people’s civil liberties.
This list of over 200 individuals includes Mugabe. Some have had their assets frozen in America.
In the face of a torrent of rhetoric from Washington, Zimbabwe’s president has remained unbending.
He has shown stubborn defiance to Western threats and American-led sanctions. He has missed no opportunity to cry out loud as a victim of Western vilification, double standards and what he has repeatedly called “rank hypocrisy.”
Other notable absentees on the US invite list include Sudan and Madagascar.
One notable inclusion is Kenya, where President Uhuru Kenyatta is currently awaiting a delayed trial at the International Criminal Court on charges related to violence after an election in 2007 that left 1 000 people dead.
The indictment has been one of the reasons Obama is yet to visit the homeland of his late father as president.
But Obama has spoken to Kenyatta on the telephone, and the Kenyan leader has enjoyed more interaction with the outside world since a massacre at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in September claimed by Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab insurgents.