Is it true that the President of South Africa intends to emulate Robert Mugabe, seize white-owned farms and give them to comrades? Yes – reading between the lines of President Trump’s Executive Order. By contrast the poser has fostered a prolonged rumpus in the country of origin. Farm owners, mostly Afrikaners, are convinced that their farms will be confiscated. Hence their traipsing to Washington or to the studio of Tucker Carlson. The government, backed by mainstream media, pooh-poohed any such idea. More, they have made dark insinuations that inevitably put a price on Boer heads. As it is they have endured many farms attacks and murders. Yet “kill the Boer, kill the farmer’ remains protected speech for political rallying.
The ruckus suits the government just fine. Presiding over a failed state layered with criminal syndicates, the more distractions it can stage the better.
The reality is that whether farm seizure is a threat or a fabrication is mute: what pressed Trump’s perpetually hot buttons are the concrete steps that South Africa took – steps that made his Executive Order inevitable. “Washington cannot support the government of South Africa undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation, our allies, our African partners, and our interests”
No ifs or buts: the gangster state godfathered by President Ramaphosa has glorified terrorism, treated Hamas leaders as dignitaries, waged lawfare against Israel, adopted anti-white labour laws, and snuggled down in Iran’s nuclear pocket. A new crime completes the indictment sheet. By giving Trump and Musk the middle finger, the government has effectively sounded the death knell on the former economic hub of Africa. Iran had acted smartly to pluck this ripe fruit rotting in the noonday African sun.
It seems difficult to wrap the head around a chaotic country at the bottom of Africa posing a headache to a US President who made short shrift of Europe as a fly in the Ukrainian ointment.
Yet it’s been a month since Trump made the order that bristled with intent. “Addressing egregious actions of the Republic of South Africa”. True enough, without further ado he stopped hundreds of millions in humanitarian aid. Now the kleptocracy will have 17% less to rake off the health budget. More importantly it delivered a rude message: You like keeping company with regimes that wish us ill? No more money for you. Goodbye.
Perhaps it was not rude enough. The antagonist is like a tormenting flea in the mad elephant’s ear.
But no more money for who? Fifteen thousand HIV-Aids patients reliant on US generosity to stay alive could pay with their lives. They are the government’s collateral damage, not Trump’s, nor the minority Afrikaners who have been scape-goated. Both government and the Trump-deranged media don’t let up. To believe them, Afrikaner activists colluded with the US President to kill off black patients. And they committed high treason by lying about the government. The police pulled the stunt on an activist upon his arrival from appearing on the Tucker Carlson network.
There is not a craven government in Africa south of the Equator to equal it. The ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela, has literally stolen the future of his iconic ‘Rainbow Nation.’ Ramaphosa, befitting a breeder of prize cattle, cuts a bulky and ponderous figure. Now there’s a genuine traitor. As Vice President he peered over the shoulder of President Jacob Zuma while the latter flogged the pick of national assets to a foreign brotherhood, spicing the deal by throwing in control of the national treasury. A week ago South Africa’s debt breached R3 trillion equal to R155,000 per capita – beyond what the pitiful average income can possibly repay.
To Volodymyr Zelensky Trump laid down the gauntlet. He could because the spoilt hero of the international community held weak cards. The South African President, buttressed by membership of BRICS, holds stronger cards. He’s made it clear that his government won’t be cajoled. In boorish retorts his cronies as good as told the President of America to take a leap. “Developed economies”, said a rotund comrade in the cabinet, “should not bully developing countries simply because they provide funds."
The minister who mishandles the portfolio of mineral resources declared the government open to nuclear cooperation with Iran, even North Korea, why not? It will mean running afoul of US sanctions, but that’s desperados for you. Withdraw the government’s genocide case against Israel at The Hague? Not if the Jew-haters’ lives depended on it. Then last week Mr Ramaphosa upped the anti by putting his name to a vicious propaganda piece in Foreign Policy. The biggest mouths in the free world can’t exceed excruciating cant of this order.
A candid and credible assessment of the impasse must encompass three South African communities: the business, the Jewish and the Afrikaner communities.
In the teeth of the economy’s decline and fall, business leaders have been worse than docile. Instead of opposing those government’s anti-white labour policies which infuriated Trump, CEO’s led the herd into the government coral. Rob Hersov, a rare exception, has called them “cowards and colluders.” Listed companies along with accounting and law firms, have DEI and BEE appointments on their boards. Black Economic Empowerment, if you want to know, is a dog whistle for anti-white hiring policy. The head spokesman for big business is the prize captive. Martin Kingston is literally married into the ANC, the socialist-communist party in Trump’s sanctioning sights. “How dare corporate SA allow somebody like that to represent its case to the government,” Hersov says.
Jewish magnates had the economic clout to stem the rot. Their companies are dominant in retail, health services and banking industries. Yet rather than inject moral direction and economic sanity; rather than call out racist policy (there are 140 statutes in which race is the determining factor); rather than lean against an ill wind that blows no good, Jewish business embraced the government’s depraved and suicidal anti-white policies. ‘Embraced’ not ‘adopted.’ The Jewish founder of a pharmaceutical chain was caught setting anti-white quotas. Even black politicians were shocked. At the scandal the Board doubled down. “DisChem admits ‘no whites’ letter and backlash cost the pharmacy hundreds of millions,” ran the headline. Yet, the group “continues to focus on its transformation journey”. Transformation is another dog whistle for hiring based on black skin.
To impress who? To curry favour for what? Instead of acknowledgement, the besieged Jewish community of no more than 55,000 got a government fully deserving the title,
‘Most antisemitic government in the free world.’ At the massacre of October 7 in southern Israel, party hacks crowed like a rooster for Hamas. At the height of the war in Gaza the Muslim minister for foreign affairs took off to Tehran to beg it to bailout the bankrupt ruling party. She returned as an Iranian agent. Her government committed itself to wage lawfare on Israel. By getting the International Court of Justice to rule on genocide in Gaza, South Africa’s pivotal part was to get a ‘restraining order’, a cease fire that would give Iran’s proxy Hamas a breather to rebuild.
The Chief Rabbi amended a synagogue prayer for the state. “How can we pray for a government that supports an organization responsible for the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust,” Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein said. Prayer or no prayer, Jew baiting is too good a device not to use on a populace fed up with government corruption and ineptitude. Yet the community had it in its power to demolish both the government’s case at the ICJ and the credibility of its Jew-averse lawyers. What did it do instead? It directed funds to communal bodies to issue lame condemnations of the government. And to address an upset letter to antisemitic President Ramaphosa for showing no sympathy for the hostages. That’ll teach him!
South African Jewry could take a page out of the book of the bigger, braver and smarter Afrikaner minority. There’s what cohesiveness can do. Its civil society organisations are not at loggerheads. They are not split by petty agendas and jealousies. Afrikaners have built effective and influential lobbies – so much so that they are giving the government apoplexy. Their umbrella Solidarity movement got an invitation to Washington. Trump is willing to give Afrikaners refugee status. He’s prepared to intercede on its behalf. As for the government, it can’t get an appointment anywhere in Washington.
Being marginalised, plunging the country into chaos, losing international agency, African agents for Iran may soon be receiving Trump’s trademark warning that, “all hell will break loose.”
Steve Apfelis an author, economist and costing specialist.