In these turbulent times it can be edifying to pause and remember the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, though ‘huddled masses’ sounds a bit like a woke sex party, and ‘breathe free’ is definitely socialist (someone has to pay for that air, you know) so on second thoughts just send me white people from SA.”
Yes, it’s been a wild few days — I certainly never imagined that the best way to lower the price of eggs in the US was to amplify the fantasies of white persecution in a small country at the bottom of the world — but at least most South Africans seem to be keeping calm and carrying on.
Of course, it’s unlikely that news of many Afrikaners’ reluctance to join Donald Trump’s Groot Drek will reach the US, especially after Elon Musk tweeted at the weekend that Julius Malema should be branded an “international terrorist”: the realities and complexities of SA politics have deliberately been enveloped in a colonial fever dream of Darkest Africa, and few Americans who read the name of Malema for the first time this week will know or care that the only thing being systematically wiped out in this country is the EFF’s membership list.
Deliberately engineered chaos
Admittedly, not all of this is deliberately engineered chaos: some of it boils down to what we shall generously call naiveté, like that displayed by those world-class suckers on the left who are still explaining to each other that they were correct not to vote because the Democrats were helping flatten Gaza whereas Trump has merely — checks notes — endorsed ethnic cleansing for profit.
Even the brightest people are revealing their relative inexperience, such as writer Cory Doctorow, who last week wrote how important it was to name and shame the private equity wreckers who are waiting for Musk to gut the US state so they can privatise and profit off whatever remains.
To prove his point, Doctorow cited one of Musk’s ferrets, a certain Marko Elez, who last year opined on the internet that he wanted to “normalise Indian hate”. Elez, wrote Doctorow, had been exposed and fired, and would “for the rest of his life … be the broccoli-haired brownshirt who got fired for his asinine, racist sh*tposting”.
I don’t blame Doctorow for believing this. You have to live through years of state capture before you understand how truly meaningless consequences are to the in-group. Because, of course, Elez is being rehired, with Musk explaining that “To err is human, to forgive divine”, while vice-president JD Vance chimed in to denounce the attempted cancelling, tweeting: “My kids, god willing, will be risk-takers. They won’t think constantly about whether a flippant comment or a wrong viewpoint will follow them around for the rest of their lives.”
Right? I mean seriously, people, it was a whole six months ago that Elez tweeted, “I was racist before it was cool”, way back when he was only 24. How much longer is the poor child going to be dogged by people reading his own words?
Playing both sides
Before I point too many fingers at the US though, I should also acknowledge the naiveté on display right here at home, not least by those of us who believed SA could keep playing both sides as the US stampeded right.
Perhaps, like the ANC, we were still daydreaming about earlier, lusher times; when Nelson Mandela could stand next to Bill Clinton and tell critics of SA’s relationship with Cuba, Iran and Libya to “literally go and throw themselves into a pool”, safe in the knowledge that Clinton would smile awkwardly and keep the cash flowing.
But that was then, and this is now … or the early 1950s, I’m still working it out. Either way, I keep hearing that Cyril Ramaphosa won’t be “bullied”; but with all due respect to our president and his calmness over the past few days, this is what small countries say to big ones just before they start negotiating for the most favourable of the least favourable terms.
Still, it would be a great pity if we are forced to give up our role as a revolving door between the western and eastern hemispheres. First, we’ve been so good at it for so long. Hell, even when we emigrate we still act as global matchmakers: Musk’s opening up of the inner workings of the US state to all hackers worth their salt could still end up being the greatest gift anyone has ever given the state security apparatuses of China, Russia and Iran. A South African did that. We bring people together.
The second reason it would be a pity is a little more dramatic, and brings me to the final, and most naive group of all: the many, many South Africans who eagerly begged Trump on social media to pressure the ANC into handing over the government to MK and whatever is left of the EFF. Of course, they didn’t think they were asking for that, but that was the likeliest outcome.
If they somehow get their wish and the Trump administration forces the ANC to reject land reform and affirmative action, there will be a huge shift by voters towards self-proclaimed radicals and revolutionaries, landing them and us with a final bitter irony: a president just like Donald Trump.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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