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Ramaphosa gets braaied and fed to Trump's Maga at the US-SA Boerewors Summit

Cringe diplomacy reigns as timid South African delegation stumbles into Trump's made-for-TV unreality show. There is a genre of comedy, probably as old as laughter itself, that asks the audience to baste in the sauce of the protagonist's humiliation. Not being a classicist, I have no idea if this kind of thing appeared in, say, Euripides; not being an Africanist, I have no notion of its prevalence in pre-contact Bantu poetry. I seem to remember some of it in Shakespeare, but don't quote me. It is certainly a feature of British sitcoms. Think Basil Fawlty, John Cleese's splenetic hotelier from the Fawlty Towers series, who bumbled himself into excruciating social mishaps. Or Ricky Gervais' The Office, where David Brent snivelled his way into disastrous interactions with his colleagues at a dead-end paper factory. Cringe comedy is now a staple on television and in the movies. It's also a staple of international diplomacy. Consider the unfolding of the much-anticipated Boerewors Summit betwixt President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald J Trump, which unfolded in and around the Oval Office on Wednesday, 21 May. There sat Ramaphosa as Trump played a video montage of Julius Malema's greatest hits, wearing a face that suggested 'recently embalmed'. It was an arse-clenchingly difficult experience. But welcome to the era of cringe geopolitics. And remember, if it's free to watch, you're the product. Braai (front) pack Give Ramaphosa this much: he knows how to pacify cranky white supremacists. Remember when he talked a whole bunch of trigger-happy (yet, sadly, broke) apartheid people off a ledge? Neither do I. But we're constantly reminded of it by Ramaphosa's apologists, who insist that he is to negotiation what Kim Kardashian is to lip filler. In advance of the Boerewors Summit, so named because, as my colleague Rebecca Davis has pointed out, Trump doesn't like to hear ladies talk (AKA DEI), Ramaphosa stacked his delegation with men. And indeed, it's as if Ramaphosa & Company planned to set up a braai in the Oval Office and jaw about golf and stuff. Johann Rupert was on the dance card, as living, walking, breathing proof that nothing has ever been taken from white people in South Africa. And maybe to furnish Trump and Melania with a host of luxury goods-cum-bribes, as has now become the norm? There were also golfers on the list, good ones, and there is nothing Trump loves more than golfers – a sport he would later describe as a sort of messianic rite of passage akin to walking over hot coals while carrying a small planet on your shoulders. It escaped no one that the delegation was stacked towards white folks. This abused minority group was finally having its moment – a visit to the White House, never more appropriately named, to meet the Grand Vizier of the latest franchise of the Ku Klux Klan. They carried gifts – although none as eye-catching as the luxury Bribe Airways 747 recently handed over to the Pentagon by Qatar – and they were ready to smooth the white sheets, bribe the administration with a Starlink deal memo and try to get some business done. The thing about braais, though, is you never know how they're going to end. Once the sausage hits the flames and the third Klippies and Coke is poured, it's game on. The only thing missing was the rugby. Sausage in Chief Twenty-first-century politics is indiscernible from entertainment. In fact, it is entertainment. Trump not only understands this, he embodies it. He not only embodies it, he doubles down on it. Ramaphosa, on the other hand, lives comfortably in and around 1998. The South African Constitution has been drafted, he's been deployed to business, he's farming large draft beasts, and all is well across the land. Unhappily, time moves on. In his various roles since those halcyon days, which now includes more than a decade as either deputy president or president, he has cut an enigmatic figure. 'Enigmatic' is a euphemism for someone who refuses to speak to the press, and prefers to communicate by reading off an iPad into the blinking eye of a television camera. This means that there was no one on Earth less prepared for a press scrum in the Oval Office, apart from death row prisoners held in solitary confinement, or medieval friars at the tail end of a vow of silence. The initial parts of the meet-and-greet seemed to go according to protocol, minus the usual blips. And it was clear, as everyone filed into Trump's lair, that the South African delegation was determined to stay on message and come home with some of that delicious Foreign Direct Investment. And, at first, it did go well. Soft and obsequious, careful not to ruffle the Big Bwana's hairdo, Ramaphosa laid out the case for South Africa as an investment destination. He made Trump aware that 600 American businesses flourish to varying degrees in the country, and that it remains a place replete with 'critical minerals' – a term that made Trump twitch like a slumbering lion that catches wind of a buck, and may have doomed South Africa to a barrage of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the near future. Trump seemed bored, mostly because he was. This meeting was, for him, nothing at all to do with business and the usual diplomatic niceties. Which is why, after Ramaphosa's pitch was done, he began playing videos of Julius Malema's greatest hits. On screen, the lights in the Oval Office darkened for dramatic effect, a supercut of Malema singing Dubul' ibhunu played for what seemed like an Andy Warhol film installation amount of time. The braai had begun. And it turns out that the South Africans were the boerewors. Flames thrown What unfolded next was an ambush that should have been anticipated, but wasn't. Give Trump this much – he has tried to get the entire world to play along with his Oval Office slugfests, but so far only Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has been willing to stand up for himself and push back against the administration's lies. Ramaphosa shifted vaguely in his seat like a puppet whose master was in the toilet doing coke with a fallen congressman. After Trump showed a video of a protest in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, featuring white crosses lining a roadside – not grave sites, as he implied, but rather a memorial to victims of South Africa's unacceptable levels of violence – and after Trump shoved reams of paperwork into his hands, all the South African could muster was a weak, 'I haven't seen that.' Trump showed nothing more than the usual stuff circulated by Maga. What was required now was a forceful rebuttal, a reminder to those pre-sent that there is no 'white genocide' in South Africa, and that minority rights are protected. It was time to own the internet and the nightly news shows with a polite but determined speech. Crickets. Instead, Ramaphosa deferred to John Steenhuisen in his capacity as minister of agriculture. He gave a short, standard DA campaign speech. Trump then threw to the golfers, whom he seemed to regard as second sons, who couldn't muster a full-throated pushback against Maga lies. In fact, Retief Goosen was spectacularly inarticulate, but nevertheless it seemed to thrill Trump that he could speak at all. Then came Johann Rupert, in keeping with the theme of white grievance, insisting that he was the greatest victim of Malema's agitation. (Tell that to the township folks shaken down by the EFF's racketeering troops, but that's a story for another day.) The handbag salesman also wasn't able to say THERE IS NO CAMPAIGN OF WHITE GENOCIDE, perhaps because he was too busy tapping Ronald Lamola on the shoulder and referring to him as 'this one'. Oh, and incidentally, a black woman spoke for several minutes. It was a shambles, but one that should have been anticipated. Trump's intention was simple – to throw red meat to his base as it came off the grill. It was the equivalent of asking Ramaphosa, when was the last time you beat your wife? And the only reply was simpering. Tongs for the opportunity I'm aware that there are those who thought that the Boerewors Summit went about as well as it could have. Clearly, I disagree. The second Trump administration is hardly an American anomaly, but a culminating point on America's long imperial arc, and a return to an expansionist, transactional mode that existed back in the 19th century. You either understand this, or you are unfit for a leadership role in 2025. By visiting the Imperium, Ramaphosa and his delegation should have realised that they were bit players in a larger drama – Trump's acceptance of the role as the White Supremacist in Chief. Yes, business is important, but if there is nothing in it for this administration, it doesn't matter what Ramaphosa says or does, they'll do what they want when they want, with no deference to diplomatic niceties. In other words, it's time to grow up. The message should have been: we're open for business, but we're closed for input in our sovereign affairs. The second Trump regime is an authoritarian gong show, a DEI initiative for drunks and failsons, and a vast empire's noisome death grunt. The moment demanded strength. It demanded a braai master. And that is indeed an ironclad rule in South Africa – never let another person touch your braai tongs. As the refugee farce unfolds, and as the lies pour in from Trump's team of bullshit mongers, it would be wonderful to return to business as usual. But that's not to be. Maddeningly, like all South African reporters in the past 30 years, about 98% of my work concerns the failure of the ANC to do even the basic work of governance with honesty and competence. I'd like to get back to that. But there's a braai happening. It's free for all. Which means we're the product. DM