When things were getting hairy in the run-up to SA’s 1994 election the late Ken Owen, then editor of the Sunday Times, would tell his staff and readers to keep their nerve. Good advice. There were many moments when the sky seemed certain to fall, but it never did.
Today in Washington Owen’s wisdom feels no less wise but takes a steelier discipline to practise. It was easier to believe SA would pull through then. South Africans truly yearned for democracy.
Can we say that today of American voters, their heads full of Fox propaganda and Elon Musk’s mendacity? They’ve appointed “a captain in an extended manic phase”, to quote the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan.
The captain is in the thrall of a barely-in-control self-medicating SA billionaire, a new Rasputin. Marauding around them is a bestiary of fanatics, scoundrels, ideologues, thugs, pubescent nerds and lickspittles, all busy smashing lives, institutions and the law while defying the courts to stop them.
Some liken it to a coup. Revolution is better. But as in many revolutions the motives of the revolutionaries are mixed and contradictory, which shortens the odds that they will screw it up. So there’s hope.
In the interim SA needs to keep its head down and focus on quietly winning the confidence of people whose understanding it will need when the tsunami passes. Assuming, that is, SA still cares to rebuild a fruitful relationship.
The government hasn’t been making it easy for its American friends. Accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice must have felt good, but it had to know it would not go down well in the US on either side of the political aisle.
Getting up America’s nose was part of the kick, I dare say. But has putting SA livelihoods at risk from loss of trade privileges improved, let alone saved, any lives in Gaza?
A year ago Republican congressman John James, who chairs the House Africa Subcommittee — who is black, a West Point graduate and a combat veteran — introduced the US-SA Bilateral Relations Review Act as a shot across Pretoria’s bow.
It listed the government’s perceived offences in great detail, citing specific examples of the ANC’s chumminess with Hamas, Russia and China and its “history of ... mismanaging ... state resources, threatening the SA people and economy”.
In June the House voted on a slimmed-down version as an amendment to the fiscal year 2025 defence authorisation bill. It required the president to determine “whether SA has engaged in activities that undermine US national security or foreign policy interests”. Predictably, all but one Republican voted yea, but so did 61 Democrats.
The amendment got lost in the wash before the bill became law, but US President Donald Trump has needed no prodding from Congress to tee up on SA. He chose an eccentric, frothing-at-the-mouth, way to do it though. His executive order, one of dozens that have spewed from the Oval Office since he was sworn in, showed no sign of input from people who know what they were talking about. It felt hormonal.
It was premised on a lie, and cut off live-saving aid that had already been suspended. As SA ambassador Ebrahim Rasool said, it was “perfomative”. Had there been actual expropriation, SA could have been declared ineligible for trade preferences under the African Growth & Opportunity Act.
As for the asylum offer to Afrikaners, had anyone bothered to ask whether they wanted it?
Meanwhile, Venezuelans fleeing real expropriation in Nicolas Maduro’s gangster state are being sent home.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio didn’t cover himself in glory either, tweeting childishly that “SA is doing very bad things”. From the tagline SA has chosen as chair of this year’s Group of 20, Li’l Marco, as Trump dubbed him in 2016, gormlessly deduced that the summiteers would be discussing DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion) and climate change. In Trumpworld, the former is the ultimate taboo, the latter a Marxist mirage.
Does Rubio really feel he has to wallow in the semantic sewer of his boss? If so, the man has the spine of a cephalopod, which would be why Trump picked him. China must be thrilled to see the US take itself out of the game.
There are members of Congress — Republicans — who get that, and know SA and its neighbours have to be part of the supply chain of minerals the US needs to rebuild its industrial base and compete.
With Trump and JD Vance at the helm, “America First” is in danger of becoming “America Alone”, as Rasool put it. This is not lost on the grown-ups, which presents an opportunity for SA to get back into their good graces while we wait for the fever to break.
• Barber is a freelance journalist based in Washington.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.