DRC: ‘Watermelon smiles’
In 2002, before the then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.” His comments were condemned as racist and Johnson was compelled to apologise when he ran for mayor of London six years later.
