Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was right, of course. Of all the factors contributing to US President Donald Trump’s rise, white distemper amid demographic change sticks out like the Voortrekker Monument on the way to Pretoria.
It’s a distemper Trump stirs and exploits. That is surely beyond dispute, notwithstanding his stronger-than-expected showing among black and Hispanic voters last November. I doubt there are many diplomats in Washington who would privately disagree, or whose cables to head office have not in some way made the same point in assessing the Maga phenomenon.
I do not say this to excuse the ambassador, a friend, for the folly of speaking his mind in what he had to know was public cyberspace or to minimise the damage he may have done. One veteran observer of SA politics commented in a group chat: “I think this can be put down to the old ANC Western Cape impulse to project yourself as a theoretician. I’m surprised there was no mention of [Amilcar] Cabral or [Antonio] Gramsci.”
That the knives were out for Rasool personally was no secret. To utter as a public figure a syllable of sympathy for the people of Gaza is to risk being branded as a terrorist-loving enabler of Hamas and Iran. Expect worse if, as a Palestinian legally resident in the US with a green card, you exercise your right to protest. Detention without trial awaits.
Joel Pollak, former DA speech writer turned Trump mbongi, has the scalp he wanted, though he will not, I am told, be moving from the ashes of his Los Angeles neighbourhood to the US ambassador’s idyllic Bishopscourt residence, as once predicted. It was Pollak’s X message and clip of Rasool’s gaffe that US secretary of state Marco Rubio attached to his post denouncing the envoy as a “race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS” and declaring him “no longer welcome in our great country”.
Rubio must know the real race-baiters in the room are @POTUS and the former South African who owns him, Elon Musk. As for who hates whom, there are clips aplenty on the internet of “Li’l Marco” expressing if not hatred then profound distaste for the man he now serves as errand boy.
No, Mr Secretary, Rasool does not hate America. If he did he would scarcely have agreed to come back for a second tour. He returned because, like President Cyril Ramaphosa, he believes the relationship worth saving even as @POTUS, to pleasure his red-hatted idolaters and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, seems hell-bent on driving it aground.
When I spoke to Rasool the day before he blew himself up he was upbeat about the way things were going, brushing off reports that official Washington had closed its doors to him. The doors weren’t closed, he said, it was simply that most of the people supposed to be behind them at the White House national security council (NSC), state department and the office of the US trade representative were not yet in place or had only just got there. Only the day before he had had a congenial meeting with the new NSC Africa director.
He went on to say he would shortly be announcing a “strategic retreat” to develop a unified strategy for engaging the administration. SA cabinet members and other senior officials would be flying over, along with business and labour representatives. US business and others with a stake in the relationship would be there too.
One hopes this bosberaad, or something like it, will still take place, but I can’t help thinking the price Trump will demand for whatever SA hopes to salvage just went up rather faster than the soaring cost of American eggs.
Not that SA is entirely bereft of cards. Musk clearly wants to bring Starlink to SA. Rasool was talking to the company about a workaround that would enable empowerees to collect rents from Starlink services without Musk having to surrender equity.
It was out of recognition of SA’s strategic importance that the Hudson Institute, a Republican think-tank, recently recommended that Trump take out his wrath on individual “anti-American” officials rather than the country as a whole.
“Robust commercial engagement is currently America’s best tool for competing with China in Africa, so it would be rash to unnecessarily sacrifice this leverage. This is especially true as SA, the dominant economy in its region, is a gateway to the rest of Southern Africa.”
Perhaps Rasool could atone by counting as one of the “anti-American” officials sacrificed to assuage the golden calf in the White House.
• Barber is a freelance journalist based in Washington.
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