There was a moment, after US President Donald Trump turned down the lights and ambushed Cyril Ramaphosa with a video, that the SA president smiled and almost giggled.
It was a classic Ramaphosa response to something controversial. We’ve seen him do it in parliament when confronted with state capture and Phala Phala. He seems to make light of it, to defer attention away from it by making a joke.
On Wednesday in the Oval Office, it was hard to tell if it was bemusement or incredulity or some kind of inappropriate shock reaction.
You could have said that for the whole of SA. There was SA’s “rabble rouser” in chief, as Johan Rupert called EFF leader Julius Malema, making his usual, but still outrageous, inciteful comments. Then came the now infamous video, already debunked as misinformation, of white crosses that Trump insisted were all graves of murdered white farmers.
When Ramaphosa said he would like to know where it was taken, Trump responded: “It’s in SA”.
As US comedian Jimmy Kimmel accurately commented: “The guy who couldn’t find SA on a map of Africa is telling the president of SA where it is”.
Despite the criticism of former US president Joe Biden being old, Kimmel added, “He never forced other world leaders to watch deepfake video posted by meemaw (grandma) on Facebook.”
Welcome to shamefest politics.
As much as the SA delegation braced themselves for something confrontational — after the humiliation meted out to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February — nobody could have foreseen this carefully planned ambush.
Ramaphosa played this dangerous course as well as he could have, to use a golfing analogy given how prominently the sport featured in the “extraordinary” meeting, as many sober commentators described it. How do you handle something that outrageous, that craven?
Ramaphosa looked like “a chicken that got rained on,” as a 702 Talk Radio caller described his reaction to Trump’s video ambush. Another caller, a woman with an Afrikaans accent, said his shaming was “well deserved” because of the “suffering and lies”.
On the whole, I think Trump has handed Ramaphosa and SA a wonderful win. Instead of fighting among ourselves, the country is united in condemnation for Trump’s trash talking. That’s our job, an indignant part of us screams out. It gave us a reason to respect our president again, who stood up to the biggest bully in the world right now. All those years of being harangued and screamed at by Malema and the EFF in parliament have proved worthwhile.
As it happens, one of the chief spreaders of misinformation about SA is Pretoria-born Elon Musk, who was in the Oval Office for the meeting. He was noticeably silent.
In true SA style — ’n boer maak a plan — Ramaphosa took a leaf out of the current most innovative man in the world, SA-born Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus, and brought his own “bomb squad”.
There were jokes in the preceding year, before Trump’s re-election, that Ramaphosa should use our world-famous golfers as a conduit to the golf-loving Trump. Sure enough, the unusual midweek Test featured a bench containing Ernie Els and Retief Goosen. Gary Player sent his apologies.
Ramaphosa and his Bomb Squad did us proud this week. It was always going to be an ambush and a shamefest.
In arguably the best demonstration of patriotism, the Big Easy pulled out his SA passport and showed it off. He did not call it a “green mamba” as many feared he would. But he made the ultimate point, despite his fame and success, he chooses to remain a South African.
Bringing in DA leader John Steenhuisen was a smart move, as was explaining how he was from an opposition party and a different race group. Steenhuisen, for his part, seized the moment and had his moment.
Not that any of this will ultimately convince Trump, whose other outrageous stunt was to show news article printouts, chanting “death, death, death”.
Even Johan Rupert’s straightforward assertion that there was no “white genocide” and that crime affected everyone “across the board” seemed not to land with Trump.
Kimmel’s joking comment about the controversial crosses video really rung true: “I mean, seriously, does anyone at the White House — does anyone around him ever say, ‘Oh, Mr. President, this one is wrong, this is not real, this one makes you look demented and dumb’? Nobody does.”
Ultimately, Ramaphosa had the last laugh, I put it to you. “I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” he joked with his counterpart.
“I wish you did,” the US President replied. “I’d take it. If your country offered the US Air Force a plane, I would take it.”
Not even Jacob Zuma was that brazen.
Ramaphosa and his Bomb Squad did us proud this week. It was always going to be an ambush and a shamefest. The staged video was worse than anyone expected, and, like Zelensky, the world has taken Ramaphosa’s side. In this instance, he deserves the praise. Like it or not, this grotesque and indefensible spectacle has united SA, and united us behind the man who stood up to the bully.
• Shapshak is editor-in-chief of Stuff.co.za
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