Violence of whiteness laid bare in Trump-Ramaphosa meeting for all the world to see

This week marks two years since journalist and sociopolitical commentator Eusebius McKaiser died, a loss to both journalism and South Africa’s critical intelligentsia community.

I yearned to hear his unfiltered take on the humiliating events in the White House’s Oval Office during the meeting between Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa. What unfolded there made me feel quite ill.

McKaiser was never one to baulk at challenging racial prejudice and discrimination, particularly the weaponisation of whiteness, and that is exactly what we were made to endure on Wednesday, 21 May.

The whole engagement enraged me, not only as a South African but also as a black woman watching the all-too-familiar dance of slave and master playing out live on international television, forcing our President to have to beg and perform for his humanity. No amount of cool, calm and factual interventions from his side stood a chance against the dismissive and irrational Trump onslaught.

I guess that, at this point, these kinds of things should not still be eliciting such visceral reactions from me, as they have been happening since before I was born. My response, however, came from a sense of anger at the spectacle of white violence demonstrated by Trump, who could not be bothered to know the difference between African countries, never mind listen to the government delegation Ramaphosa led.

Instead, he chose to listen to privileged white golfers and a fellow bullish businessman because they have more in common.

I also found myself thinking that American people are the ones who gifted the world with Trump after electing him at the polls last November, something I attribute to a culture of worshipping celebrity and money as opposed to reason and moral values.

The likes of Trump are what happens when a society lets popular culture dictate people’s aspirations amid disinformation and fearmongering. A song titled This Is America by actor and musician Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino, has been playing in my head, illustrating this point.

“We just wanna party (yeah)
Party just for you (yeah)
We just want the money (yeah)
Money just for you (you)…
This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
Look what I’m whippin’ now”

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.