3 days ago
Why Trump should be the last person SA can take advice from
That the detractors of Black majority rule in South Africa should invoke the support and authority of a politician of the likes of Trump is both revealing and outrageous, says the writer.
Image: AFP
Mushtak Parker
FORGET about the art of diplomacy, the banalities of whether President Cyril Ramaphosa was ambushed, mugged, braaied, or whether he displayed an admirable demeanour of ubuntu-like stoicism for the greater good when he met President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on May 21.
The danger is to overthink the non-meeting between the two leaders which was more like a self-entitled and delusional emperor holding court over a vassal surrounded by a cabal of sycophantic courtiers and a coterie of reluctant foreign conscientious objectors.
Then there are those relics of the apartheid era who will never accept the end of white supremacist rule in South Africa whether for reasons of eugenics or even a grossly misconceived notion of divine sanction, and who hanker for its return, disguised or otherwise, in whichever 21st century 'transformation'.
Here one can sense the emergence of a global alliance of supremacist forces bringing together the far right in North and South America, the European Union, Eastern Europe including Russia, and Australasia - united by a socio-cultural ideology based on skin colour and the superiority of the white race, under the banner 'White Nationalists of the World Unite and Fight'.
Whereas the likes of Bolsonaro, Milei, Orban and Meloni in power are largely ineffective because of their lacklustre governance and irrelevance, and their lack of global reach and influence, and the failure of Weidel, Le Pen, Wilders, Farage and others to do so, it is the second coming of Donald Trump, erroneously but flatteringly regarded as the 'Leader of the Free World' that has emboldened this nefarious alliance seeded and nurtured in the US, seeking out and picking fights with resource rich countries elsewhere under the veil of white victimhood, as in the case of the white Afrikaners in South Africa, and the spectre of corrupt largesse as in the case of DCR and its enormous booty of critical minerals.
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Not surprisingly, they and their ilk are the ones who are hailing Trump for calling out the appalling crime rate, the state of corruption and the entirely legitimate policy of affirmative action in South Africa, instead of castigating him for peddling a litany of fake news, misrepresentation and half-truths, courtesy of the American Alt Right, about Afrikaner 'genocide', white victimhood and marginalisation.
Others in our midst albeit less extreme but still beholden to a neo-liberal dispensation for the post-apartheid South Africa, revel in the pastime of ANC-baiting, at least in the policy, delivery and outcomes failures of the Zuma and Ramaphosa administrations.
Not all Afrikaners nor White South Africans, like their Black and Brown compatriots, of course are racists or bigoted. Many on all sides were eminently involved in the liberation struggle directly or indirectly, several of whom made the ultimate sacrifice in the notorious apartheid prisons.
That the detractors of Black majority rule in South Africa should invoke the support and authority of a politician of the likes of Trump is both revealing and outrageous. It is either an act of desperation or a naïve attempt at whitewashing the excesses of apartheid rule or in the hope of a resurgent white nationalism led by the world's largest economy and military machine sweeping the globe that somehow could impact the fortunes of like-minded polities in Europe, the Americas and Oceana, and white minorities elsewhere.
Trump is the last person South Africans of all people with their two centuries plus fight against colonialism and apartheid should heed advice from.
Firstly, it's none of his business. Secondly, as the adage goes: 'Charity begins at home.' Trump is not a moral man. His moral compass has long been lost in the fog of his narcissism (his apologists call it his quirkiness, eccentricity, and unpredictability). In terms of polity, he is the anti-Christ of democracy, willing at a blink of an eye to destroy its very fabric – elections, separation of powers, rule of law, due process, independent judiciary, and the spate of associated oversights and checks and balances.
Forget about his reality show antics and his dubious credentials as an exponent of the 'Art of the Deal.' Of all the fake news and half-truths he has rolled out against South Africa, the US treatment of its Black and Latino populations infinitely overshadows both in terms of victims killed at the hand of a seemingly egregious police force, and foreigners being arbitrarily kidnapped in broad daylight on the streets of the USA by ICE-clad operatives and so-called law enforcement agents without due legal process.
The abolition of habeas corpus is being touted by the die-hard MAGA fringe under the guise of national interest and security. How poignant that the Oval Office soap opera came a few days shy of the 5th anniversary on May 25, of the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black American man, in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old White police officer, who knelt on Floyd's neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down in a street.
South Africa is a nascent democracy, barely three decades the wiser. Its learning curve has been very steep and what it has achieved in terms of constitutional government, freedom of the press, truth and reconciliation and transfer of power and even now in coalition government, is remarkable.
Those who are obsessed with a neo-liberal agenda for the country are weighed down by the straitjacket of their own narrow ideology bereft of any understanding of nor empathy with the ravages and brutality of centuries of colonialism and apartheid rule.
The same applies to factions within the ANC coalition and other parties such as the SACP and EFF, beholden to equally foreign ideologies – Marxism, Maoism, Afro-communism – which is as anathema to the spirit of Ubuntuism as is unfettered robber baron capitalism.
Just as Madiba recognised reconciliation and forgiveness as a pathway for the future of the republic, he was also aware of the enormous challenges that lay ahead in institutional and capacity building, in crime and punishment, in democratising education, job creation, youth engagement, gender balance and above all narrowing the huge inequality gaps in income, access to services et al and in opportunities.
In some respect the ANC has been a victim of its own governance hubris. If Zuma presided over the wanton state capture of assets with its associated corruption and cronyism, Ramaphosa has failed to stem the slide towards gratuitous self-enrichment, mismanagement, ineffective decision-making and policy implementation, enforcement and legal consequences, albeit things are less dire as under the Zuma era.
Objections to Black/Brown empowerment and affirmative action, a tried and tested precedent in other post-colonial societies, are a red herring. Such policies can have time limits, but the criteria must be unequivocal. Similarly, the conduct of democratic polity in which the ConCourt has dismissed race hate chants by the EFF seemingly as constitutional, is mind-boggling. It only gives succour to the Trumps of this world.
Modern diplomacy is supposedly the art of influencing the decisions and behaviour of foreign governments and peoples through dialogue, negotiation, and other measures short of war or violence. The proof will be in the pudding. We wait with bated breath what goodies or nasties
the trade negotiations between the two countries conjure up over the next few months.
Parker is a writer based in London
