That Donald Trump’s next four years will have profound consequences for the world is a given. He cannot be ignored, because as we have seen this past week, these racist, right-wing tendencies manifest in societies across the world.
Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding. Evil is silly, it may be horrible, but at the same time it’s not a compelling idea. It’s predictable. It needs a tuxedo, it needs a headline, it needs blood, it needs fingernails. It needs all that costume in order to get anybody’s attention…
— Toni Morrison
During Barack Obama’s 2009 address to Congress, South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson infamously shouted: “You lie!” while Obama was outlining his proposal for reforming healthcare.
There were other accusations against Obama of disrespecting the office of president, like the “tan suit incident” that kept Fox News animated for days.
One can almost draw a through-line from those moments, including attacks on Michelle Obama, and the racist-laden rhetoric and policies that President Donald Trump now espouses.
In fact, Trump’s entire presidency may well be seen as a great backlash against the fact that an intellectually superior black man presumed to occupy the White House, with not a whiff of personal unethical scandal attached to him.
Of course, it’s more complex than that since Trump, as populists often do, forged a coalition across race and class in the November election, inter alia among those who were looking for strongman leadership and those who had deep economic concerns.
Yet Trump, so obviously flawed and ignorant, has made a blood sport of escaping accountability for what he says or for lowering the tone of the presidency. In fact, when he used an expletive during a press gaggle recently, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt justified it by saying Trump was angry. It is not hard to understand why Obama was treated so very differently.
Lies are the currency of the Trump presidency, as is ignorance.
In a week of “shock and awe” and “flooding the zone” with executive orders aimed at any country that has dared to differ with Trump or against whom he or his wingman Elon Musk have a personal or business grievance, South Africa was in the firing line as regards expropriation of land and our case against Israel at the International Criminal Court last year.
Egged on by Musk
On the expropriation of land, Trump has been egged on by Musk, Joel Pollak and right-wing Trump sympathisers in South Africa.
Trump and Musk do not care for facts — but they do still matter.
We are a constitutional democracy and so any expropriation that happens must be done in line with our Constitution. We are also sovereign and so no country, no matter how powerful, should dictate how we deal with the thorny issue of redress.
Does this mean that the Expropriation Act is perfect? No. Mercifully, we have independent courts in South Africa that are well schooled in the principle of legal rationality and also constitutionalism in general. But Musk, Trump and others use convenient tropes when making their case.
As Mark Swilling put it so neatly, there has been no persecution of the white minority since 1994. He writes: “To start with, this is not just about alleged expropriation of Afrikaner land (that, by the way, once belonged to the indigenous populations). It is about defending white privilege in general and unmitigated opposition to BEE and redress of past wrongs … white people have got a lot wealthier since 1994… How is that possible if you assume they must be a persecuted minority in a black-ruled country?”
But it seems that no matter how many times the facts are presented, Trump and his acolytes will simply believe their own narrative. As Trump himself said when he told a staffer to lie to the media: “If you say it enough times, they’ll believe you.”
And so came a rather embarrassing media release from the US embassy here this week saying: “The US is closely monitoring land and farm seizures in South Africa and remains committed to fair and just resolutions.”
It then went on to quote Trump’s X rant that: “South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people very badly… I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
Statement unsupported by facts
Who can possibly respond to this statement unsupported by facts? What “full investigation” is being talked about? In Trump’s world, the drama is the point.
This week Musk admitted in the Oval Office (in a truly bizarre press conference that felt like parody as Trump sat at the Resolute desk watching as the unaccountable billionaire rocked one of his 12 children on his shoulders and spoke to the press) that some things he says will be “incorrect”, presumably a euphemism for lies.
Those lies in the case of our country have far-reaching consequences (and for countries waiting for US aid that he cut and which sits rotting in ports now).
The thinking is all so flawed and so confused that it’s hard to know how to respond. Yet here the world is, having to respond to whatever order is unleashed by the White House on a daily basis.
That Trump’s next four years will have profound consequences for the world is a given. He cannot be ignored, because as we have seen in our country this past week, these racist, right-wing tendencies manifest in societies across the world.
Here at home, for example, many Christians believe that Trump — the convicted felon, sexual deviant and liar — has been sent by God to put the world to rights. They believe without question that South Africa, too, needs an unelected, rule-breaking Elon Musk to sort out the government. (Of course, they may have felt differently when Jacob Zuma sent his henchmen in to capture the National Treasury.)
Then there are those who have come out in full support of Trump on expropriation — they are right-wing Afrikaners, who despite historical privilege, believe they have been hard done by since 1994.
And then of course there are those — and the Western Cape is awash with many — who wish we had a “strongman” as a president and who denounce the ANC. They firmly believe that foreigners are taking their jobs and perhaps their votes have gone to the xenophobic Patriotic Alliance (another reason Gayton McKenzie should not be in the Government of National Unity).
Our country has many challenges and it is our duty to deal with them thoughtfully and with care.
That the ANC has failed the majority of (poor and black) South Africans is a fact, that redistribution specifically via BBB-EE has largely failed is also correct. But that does not make Musk and his right-wing, uninformed rants right and does not justify his and Trump’s racism.
We are required to hold two thoughts at once during this complex time and to stick to our proverbial knitting — that is, to understand that ours remains a struggle of memory against forgetting.
We would do well to remember that our Constitution, written by us and for us, has been a singular guardrail during the height of State Capture; that our free press is to be supported and lauded for speaking truth to power every day; and that our courts have not been captured and by and large faithfully interpret the Constitution.
We have much to be proud of. We are not Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s “Rainbow Nation” as we remain too divided by race, class and deep inequality, yet we have shown ourselves to be resilient in the face of attack.
Our country is fraught, complex and often a very difficult place in which to live. What has happened since 1994 has been hopeful, deeply disappointing, frustrating and then also joyful.
The “rainbow myth” has, however, slowly but surely dissipated as the divides of race and class often find us adrift. South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world, our unemployment rate is at a staggering 32.1% and millions go to bed hungry every night.
State Capture
We somehow survived nearly a decade of State Capture, facilitated by a governing ANC that has lost its ethical moorings, and we survived the Zuma years that brought only fiscal disaster and a deep sense of hopelessness.
We have run the gamut of emotions in this country that “is held bleeding between us”, as Antjie Krog says in her poem, Country of Grief and Grace.
In these fraught political times, with bloody conflict in the Middle East, it provides a timely reminder, too, of what South Africa might have been had we not negotiated our future, imperfect as that process was.
We came to the edge of the abyss and we pulled ourselves out of that mutually hurting stalemate. That is part of the South African psyche and key to understanding how we deal with adversity.
And so as Trump and those around him spread misinformation about our country, the role of the Government of National Unity (GNU) is to “double down” (to use a dreadful Americanism), to continue making the case for constitutional democracy and the rule of law, and to attempt to harness progressive forces around the world.
It may well also be a moment where the Global South realigns as America becomes an increasingly capricious economic partner. There is, as Anne-Marie Slaughter has argued, a case to be made for the “middle powers” to exploit this moment.
It will not be easy, of course. Above all, however, a united GNU must work even harder to ensure that lives improve for the majority of poor people in South Africa. And that means good, clean government, accountable to the people.
We have a long way to go and a small window of opportunity in which to make significant progress given the ANC’s own perilous politics of succession.
But as the tissue of lies spread about our country, Joel Pollak, Elon Musk and the right-wing conspirators were met with a gratifying and very South African sense of outrage in a country where many people live with a deep sense of the injustice of the past, and where many are working across many complex divides to make ours a more equal society.
Because for so many of us born of this place, those who choose to stay and who understand that all countries are complex, but ours is particularly so, the American onslaught based on untruths has been an affront.
Halting progress
Those who peddle lies seek to wipe out all nuance about our country, its halting progress and the many things about which we remain hopeful and, indeed, often joyful.
We are accustomed to those with limited understanding of who we are. So, despite the attacks, we must continue to make the case for our constitutional democracy and for our country.
For we are not the ANC in the same way that America is not Donald Trump.
We will do so despite those among us who would seek to destroy from within (on all sides of the political spectrum) and those outside who peddle lies and misinformation to fuel an agenda of hate and division. DM
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