Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe does not appear to have much patience for American diplomats.

Johnnie Carson, US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, met with Mugabe at the African Union meeting in Libya. For Mugabe, it was the first high-level diplomatic meeting with an American official in years. Apparently, Carson took a hard line and skeptical position about the power-sharing arrangement Mugabe has with his primary rival Morgan Tsvangirai.

Mugabe was not happy about their discussion.

“You would not speak to an idiot of that nature. I was very angry with him, and he thinks he could dictate to us what to do and what not to do,” Mugabe said.

However, that is not all Mugabe had to say.

We have the whole of SADC (South African Development Community) working with us, and you have the likes of little fellows like Carson, you see, wanting to say: ‘You do this, you do that.’

“Who is he?

“I hope he was not speaking for Obama. I told him he was a shame, a great shame, being an African American.”

Carson, like Obama, is African American. Perhaps Mugabe was thinking that he might get a free ride from a Democratic administration. After last year’s elections, widely seen as rigged in Mugabe’s favor, tremendous international pressure came upon the Mugabe government. The United States was one of those countries putting pressure on Mugabe. He did not like it then, either.

Jendayi Frazer, Carson’s predecessor, is also African-American. After the Zimbabwean presidential election, Frazer suggested that Tsvangirai had won.

Mugabe replied, that Frazer acted like “a little American girl trotting around the globe like a prostitute.”

That gives a good indication that Mugabe is one of the few people in the world who does not see any difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration. He deserves that viewpoint.