PRESIDENT TRUMP’S MISGUIDED RANT REVEALS SA’S PERSISTENT RACIAL DIVISIONS

This week’s ill-informed rant by the US President Donald Trump is not in a vacuum. It derives its oxygen from the DA, AfriForum and their ilk who have openly cried out to the West and the US in particular to intervene in democratic South Africa’s internal affairs.

Like AfriForum, the DA has played a significant role in the concoction of lies that South Africa’s white population is under a siege of the ANC’s tyrannical rule.

To this effect, dubious statistics about farm killings of white farmers by blacks are an everyday, systematic and orchestrated affair. Fierce opposition to the BELA act – opposition aimed at the preservation of the undesirably racially-skewed societal imbalances, has served to expose our nation’s propensity to pull in different directions.

The DA and parties to the right of a national body politic have protested far and near, depicting our country’s governance system as undemocratic and worthy of rebuke and punishment.

The recent passing of the hugely watered-down version of Land Expropriation without Compensation was, at least to the AfriForum and its ilk, the straw that broke the back of the camel. The close proximity of SA-born billionaire and Trump’s confidante, Elon Musk, should not be overlooked. The tycoon’s penchant to poke his nose in the political affairs of other nations’ is not a secret. Ask the Germans and the Brits, among others.

Through a protracted opposition to the ANC’s transformational agenda, the DA has played the role of a protagonist, using dynamic public relations strategies, parliamentary processes and the judiciary to oppose the ANC-led government.

The DA`s treacherous election campaign message of the “Doomsday Coalition” – a potential political cooperation between the ANC, EFF and the MK Party – was laced with dangerous subtleties aimed at creating race-based fear of a leftist-leaning, pro-working class  government.

Steadfastly, the DA has conveniently played the role of the vanguard of the privileged class and like AfriForum, depicting white people as utterly besieged purely on the basis of colour – reversed apartheid, if you like.

The advent of the Government of National Unity (GNU) following the indecisive May 29 elections of 2024, has caused the DA to back-track on a lot of the party’s disingenuous rhetoric. Land Expropriation without Compensation Act is one of the tunes the party has gone soft, or markedly stopped singing.

This sudden change in political posture by the DA has left many of its bases perplexed. Some have even accused the party of being a sell-out vehicle. It is a political gamble the DA under party leadership of Helen Zille and John Steenhuisen has been prepared to take.

President Trump’s rant ironically reflects the DA’s conundrum. The party is in a marriage of convenience with the ANC, the party that the Trump says is “doing horrible things” to SA’s white minority population.

This political headache for the DA is compounded by the party’s relentless determination to thwart any cooperation between the ANC and leftist parties. That would spell the dawn of the doomsday scenario.

But now that Trump has rattled the cage, where to for the DA and the like-minded? A fundamental epistemological lesson goes as follows: He who lives in a glass house does not throw stones.

My view is that it is precisely at this point that President Cyril Ramaphosa must go for the jugular. Too many government ministers, led by President Ramaphosa himself, have endeavoured to allay Trump’s misplaced concerns, and fears.

SA’s section 25 of the Constitution guarantees property rights, and any land that could be confiscated will most likely be land that is not in use and there would be evidence that such land is confiscated for public good, in accordance with the dictates of the laws of the land.

There is no farmer’s land that is under threat, or any citizen’s. That, in a nutshell, is the total summation of the assurance cited by the authorities.

This is the message that President Ramaphosa must task the DA leadership in the GNU to take to Washington and Europe, convincing their sympathizers that they were wrong about depicting white South Africans as an endangered species.

For President Ramaphosa and the GNU, the spin-offs from unleashing Steenhuisen to lead an international public relations exercise will be massive. Trump and others in Washington will most likely accept assurance that comes from the DA leader than anyone else. After all, it is the DA that caused the hullabaloo in the first place. As they say, he who makes the bed, lie on it.

For our country’s political elites, this saga tempts one to argue that somehow the chickens have come home to roost. More than 30 years after democracy, SA is still struggling to create a single source of patriotic attraction that binds us all regardless of race, gender or creed.

Thirty years on, SA is still recognized as the world’s most unequal society. Thabo Mbeki decried the definitive two economies state of the nation – one white and affluent and the black and dismal.

This is a reality for SA today. Race is still a determinant factor in access to a better life. Stats SA recently pointed to the huge gap between white earners and their black earners.

In my view, these are the distorted faults of progress, and perhaps it should be the GNU’s top priority to rally all people to pledge their allegiance to SA, our beautiful land.