Heavens, but US President Donald Trump is an ass. Ignorant, narcissistic and destructive at home and abroad, he issued, last week, out of the blue, a directive that no US official would attend the G20 summit in Joburg next week.
Not that G20 summits are important — they aren’t. The weekend meeting will be all about agreeing on a declaration by the end of the Sunday, when attending leaders go home. President Cyril Ramaphosa specialises in declarations, so as long as this one includes inequality, human dignity and gender-based violence, he’ll be happy. It’ll all be instantly forgotten.
Nonetheless Trump, the great distorter, becomes chair of the G20 at the end of the Joburg summit. He won’t be there and won’t care. In fact, in all probability, his decision to pull his vice-president, JD Vance, from attending this time arose from the mess he made of a speech on South America last week in Florida, home to a large number of Cuban refugees. “For generations,” he drooled, “Florida has been a haven for those fleeing communist tyranny in South Africa.”
Trump pretended nothing odd had happened and immediately segued into an attack on “genocide” against white Afrikaner farmers. Stung by the global amusement, he then doubled down and ordered that no US official would come to the G20.
Strategically, Trump’s malevolent treatment of SA risks quickening our alignment with China and sealing, for decades, a new geopolitical reality that can only harm the US and the West.
Afrikaner farmers are perfect for Trump. All reports of farm murders are passed directly to the White House, and the Trump administration has formed close ties with Solidarity, the umbrella for a range of Afrikaner groups, including AfriForum. US officials here ahead of Vance’s now aborted G20 visit were due to visit the Voortrekker Monument before being pulled back to Washington.
There’s not much, by way of traditional diplomacy, that the government can do, and Trump will probably dismiss any trade deal that reaches his desk that doesn’t satisfy a range of political points he is determined to make about violence against Afrikaners he insists is happening here.
But while SA can still act, it dithers, bewildered and feeble as Trump’s crazed 30% tariffs bite into SA jobs and SA lives. We still have no ambassador in Washington, a staggering failure of Ramaphosa’s leadership.
Under apartheid the Nats built a sophisticated machine to temper international opposition. It paid Western politicians, journalists and opinion leaders to visit SA and gave them wide access to the people they wanted to see. It spent money attending conferences and cities abroad to tell the “separate development” story. It organised sympathisers to write opinion pieces for powerful newspapers and made sure its people were regularly interviewed on TV.
We are palpably fearful of upsetting Trump, but the fact is that, like all cowards, he backs down when confronted, and the time may have come now to fight back. The fact is that Trump is on the cusp of creating a hugely destructive problem for the US.
SA may be a rapidly declining power, but it is still a serious economy, and we still sit on one of the top sea routes in the world — the only serious alternative to the Suez Canal if it ever falters. Strategically, Trump’s malevolent treatment of SA risks quickening our alignment with China and sealing, for decades, a new geopolitical reality that can only harm the US and the West.
Like all bullies, Trump needs someone he can push around, and we have handily made ourselves available for that. As a result we will suffer all sorts of consequences, but, one day, the worm will turn and the US political leaders looking down at their shoes while Trump roughs us up now may wonder why Pretoria doesn’t pick up the phone when they call. It may in fact already be happening.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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