Licking the US jackboot is plain unsanitary; it’s time for South Africa to grow up

For decades, as they grew fatter and smugger, ANC stalwarts would grumble their hoary communisms about the United States and the imperial order, and how neocolonialism was befouling an otherwise glorious National Democratic Revolution.

At the same time, the country clicked in tamely with the neoliberal order. The Treasury acted like sober adults, making sure that the bills were paid and the assets and liabilities roughly balanced. No “developing” country talked more shit out of both sides of its mouth. We had our cake and we ate it, and ate it, and ate it.

Suddenly, there is no more cake. Americans voted for Donald Trump a second time, presumably taking him at his word that he would pull the country back from eight decades of botched foreign adventurism. The commies were right about one thing: every foreign policy move the Americans made since the end of the Marshall Plan sucked big time.

Trump’s promise was, as his AfriForum superfans would say, genoeg. Enough. And yet, what they’ve gotten instead is an imperial presidency, the first true iteration of unaccountable monarchy since the English were booted out of the US in 1812.

The detailed plans for the second Trump presidency were laid out in the 900-page Project 2025 document, which was disavowed by Republicans on the campaign trail. But it was there for anyone who cared to look: strip back all business regulations, destroy consumer protections, wipe out the federal bureaucracy, weaponise the justice department, gut law enforcement, unfetter the executive.

Hyper-capitalist zero-sum game

As a piece of red meat thrown to its coalition, the Trump administration has rolled back Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, reversed “woke” policies and ended the relentless, anti-feminist scourge of men competing in women’s sports. (Watching centre-leaning South African liberals endorse all of this has been comedy gold — it’s like dassies darting into the mouth of a lion, thinking it’s a luxury hotel suite.)

But keep your eye on the ball, as it were. This is a revolution of staggering proportions. What the Trump administration has done is to ring-fence itself, its allies and enablers from prosecution, and embark on a hyper-capitalist zero-sum game, in which there can only be a few winners and legions and legions of losers.

Because Trump and his cronies are now immune from prosecution and because they’re about to face down federal judges and effectively render their constitution moot, the rule of law applies only to the US underclass, who will find that they have no recourse against corporate (or government) predation.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. But the Americans are entitled to their experiment — one that forms the logical conclusion to an empire built on risk, tolerance for failure and individual aspiration.

Unfortunately, it comes with a large side helping of stupidity and hubris. The frontier always beckons, and so Canada, Greenland and Gaza are seen as palimpsests on which to scribble a new expansive America in bright orange crayon. This is dumb.

What’s less dumb is the pincer moves that announce the US’s real foreign policy aspirations. The first is the gutting of USAid, the sprawling soft power initiative that was so widespread and complex that even it didn’t know what it was doing. Hundreds of thousands of Africans will now be without HIV/Aids medication and other vital healthcare initiatives. This is a grotesque expression of Trumpian cruelty — but it’s hardly a new American phenomenon. Just ask the Afghans, the Kurds, the South Vietnamese or the Canadians, for that matter. America is, and always has been, an unreliable ally.

And then there’s the decision, announced late on Monday, to legalise bribery of foreign officials. Combine this with the fact that the US Supreme Court legalised gratuities for US politicians, and the message is clear: American business can pay to play. It now means that corrupt Chinese, Russian and Turkish state-owned companies face competition in the stuff-the-envelope race. As should be crystal clear, unfairness and tilting the playing field is the entire point.

Many lives will be lost as Africa adjusts to this new reality. Many more will be lost in the unregulated and brutal scramble for resources that follows. Perhaps the continent will once again bleed while resources are stolen.

Or perhaps it’s time for Africa to grow the fuck up?

The business of survival

Yes, colonial plunder has done untold damage, and yes, neoliberalism has made things even worse. But at this stage, we will have to save the lamentations for slam poetry festivals and PhD dissertations. Now is the time to get on with the business of survival in a new world order that sees us as one thing and one thing only: prey.

What the arch morons at AfriForum/Solidarity don’t seem to understand, as they lovingly slather their tongues across the leather boots of their Maga Führers, is that they’re nothing more than tiny cogs in the distraction machine. They begged to be treated as victims, and now they’re officially considered as such. Mazel tov!

Meanwhile, US foreign policy has become nakedly transactional. Quid pro quo baby! And perhaps that’s how it should be — something for something.

The question is: can South Africa hold up in the face of such temptation? Can the utterly rotten ANC, along with its variously dazzled coalition partners, act in the country’s best interests? Or will it be more politics of the belly, this time without the threat of an American arrest warrant?

Regardless, no more can our governing parties lean back on old shibboleths. Turning east will solve nothing — only by turning inward will we find answers. What does South Africa hope to be? A liberal democracy that offers opportunity and the rule of law to all of its citizens?

Or a kleptocracy that mirrors what the US hopes to become?

And herein lies the irony. Once we aspired to be like America — a land of the brave and the free. Now, America aspires to be like us — a land of the crooked and the corrupt. Inadvertently, Trump has presented us with the greatest opportunity in our 30-year history — the opportunity to stand on our own. It will be difficult and painful, and we have yet to prove that we’re up to it.

But ask Kallie Kriel what it’s like to lick a jackboot — it’s plain unsanitary, man. South Africa does not want to become an Arakis-like vassal state of Evil Empire. Time to put on the big girl panties.

Time to grow up. DM