HOW RAMAPHOSA & CO INADVERTENTLY SHOT THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT IN AMERICA

Inadvertently, President Cyril Ramaphosa and his team to the White House ended up achieving what they never set out as their goal in the first place: Confirming before the international media that South Africa is suffering from ubiquitous crime.

South Africa’s detractors have often described our country as the crime capital of the world. And, in their mission to reset frosty bilateral ties with Washington, President Ramaphosa and his team members took time, one after the other, painting a picture of a crime-riddled society that is simply too much of a high risk to invest.

Team SA was vociferously attempting to debunk the AfriForum-led fat lie of genocide against the Afrikaner community, especially farmers. But in that turbo-charged performance, the President and his team unfortunately ended up shooting themselves in the foot, drawing a picture of pervasive crime for which they asked their host President Donald Trump for technological assistance to curb it.

Violence and crime against the Afrikaner community was always going to be high on the agenda during President Ramaphosa’s meeting with his unpredictable US counterpart this week. President Ramaphosa was armed with credible players in his team to dispel the Afrikaner genocide myth. However, the sudden accentuation of SA’s crime epidemic in general was the work of President Ramaphosa’s undoing.

In attempting to counter the false narrative of Afrikaner farmers genocide, our President voluntarily revealed that SA’s crime was not discriminatory in nature. We all have a fair share of it, he and his team argued without any force or coercion.

Afrikaner billionaire Johann Rupert, a member of the Ramaphosa delegation and a close friend of President Trump, added two very crucial but equally self-harming details about crime in SA.

The Cape Flats in the Western Cape, which is under the governance of Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen’s DA party, experience the bulk of their crime from gang warfare.

Secondlly, according to the highly-esteemed Rupert, the wine farmlands experience most of the crime from the marauding illegal foreigners.

Now, what this means is that the illegal foreigners are untraceable. Unless caught in the act, there is no way to investigate their whereabouts. They have no finger prints in the country’s home affairs database, no source of knowing who they are, their age, gender, how long they’ve been in the country, what else they do for a living other than steal, kill and maim their victims, and so forth.

Rupert’s assertion is unfortunately true. But additionally, in front of the president and a few of his cabinet ministers, Rupert was telling the White House and international community at large that SA’s borders are porous, and immigration systems accordingly in shambles.

The border patrol authorities are not winning against illegal fence-jumpers (others go under the fence, or simply through it) and the picture Rupert painted was of a chaotic free-for-all.

Trump has recently sent packing dozens of Venezuelan gang members, declaring them undesirable aliens in the US. Rupert painted a picture of the Western Cape that is infested with gang wars that constantly claim innocent lives and have turned life into hell for the multitudes.

President Ramaphosa was determined to strike a trade deal that involved all sort of assistance, including in crime fighting technology. But even the most ordinary US police officer listening to the SA Team’s presentation would shake in their boots and rather resign from the force than being deployed to SA.

And yet, that was not the end of the story!

One of the professional golfers in President Ramaphosa’s team, Retief Goosen, told President Trump and his people about the hellish life his family endures in in Polokwane, Limpopo.

His elderly mother lives in constant fear of being attacked and raped. His brother struggles with the safe-guarding of family business that involve part-time farming. “My family lives behind high electric fence,” the man affectionately known in the golfing circles as “The Goose” told President Trump.

For a moment, I was wondering for which team Goosen was playing for – Trump or Ramaphosa?

Then “the Big Ease”, Ernie Else, a golfer friend of President Trump, also painted a picture of a SA riddled by indiscriminate wave of crime. All these performances, mark you, come in an effort to dispel the false narrative that the Afrikaner farmers are exclusively targeted in a reign of terror, or genocide, as the White House believes.

We are trying to build a country together, but there are some who are working against transformation. The objectives for an inclusive society are noble, but crime is a nightmare, to paraphrase Else.

Even COSATU’s President Zingiswa Losi added her own labour spice to the over-arching albeit unintended theme of crime to the televised exchanges between Washington and Pretoria. SA needs the US companies to invest, but the US needs to assist SA in the efforts to push back against the runaway crime otherwise the environment would not be conducive for US investment, she reasoned.

Now, in the light of the overall performance of President Ramaphosa’s team, we need to be worried. We must be very worried. Sometime ago the sitting Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, confirmed that some police stations around the country are under the 24-hour protection of the ADT, or other private security companies.

Initially, I had dismissed such claims as sheer baloney, or downright racist. It wasn’t until the then Minister Cele confirmed the claims that I was left with a jaw down.

On the day that President Ramaphosa and Team were inadvertently shooting themselves in the foot, something in support of their scary presentation to the White House was happening in Kleinvlei in the Western Cape.

The Kleinvlei police station was attacked. Luckily, or thankfully, no one was hurt. With AfriForum in our midst, I have no doubt that the news has already reached Elon Musk and the White House. A few months ago, another police station was attacked in the Eastern Cape at night and guns stolen.

Granted, President Ramaphosa & Co was strenuously trying to show that crime is not an exclusive preserve for the Afrikaner minority. We all have our own share of it, and hardly ever refer to it as “genocide”.

This unfortunate message of a SA under the throes of criminality went out globally from the horse’s mouth. Every foreign investor into our economy must be evaluating their options. As for potential investors, they must have thought coming from the lips of the country’s head of state, his ministers, SA’s wealthiest man in Rupert and a couple of professional golfers who are not into politics, SA must sure be a hell of unsafe destination to do business.

Even the Agriculture Minister in the team, John Steenhuisen, acceded to a battle with crime, but as always, never lost the opportunity to have a go at Julius Malema and the MK Party, a cooperation between the two of which – in the eyes of Steenhuisen – constitute a “Doomsday Coalition”. The DA leader told Trump: “We joined the GNU to keep this lot out!”

As Ramaphosa and Team would wish, let’s hope the harm they inflicted unto themselves before a tricky encounter with Trump is not fatal, and can be healed sooner than later. History must never repeat itself, hopefully. The President and his Team need to learn to stick to their script, no matter how ferocious video-led ambush could be. SA is not a banana republic and that, at least, is a point that was well made amid the ensuing Oval Office melee.