Keep our respect in dealing with Trump
DONALD Trump’s election as US president this week changes the way in which South Africa will have to operate in a changing geopolitical order. Trump has shown himself to be the antithesis of the South African constitutional ideal, not respecting the vulnerable or reaching out to those who form the other to his bombastic and self-serving norm.
Trump was the candidate endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, and in South Africa racist right-wing social media users and organised rightwingers were almost without exception appropriating his victory. This is not to tar all of his South African supporters with the racist brush, but just about zero of South Africa’s assorted right-wing racists were rooting for Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
To many decent people it is a shock that someone with his beliefs on women, immigrants, religious freedom and international affairs could be elected president by a country as blessed and generally civilised as the US.
But the world moves on. South Africa will have to adapt and thrive as best we can in a selfish new world order, where self-interest trumps the common good.
For despite harbouring some warm and fuzzy feelings about Nelson Mandela, Trump is no fan of democratic South Africa. He has consistently described our country as “a crime-ridden mess just waiting to explode”, and called Judge Thokozile Masipa a “moron” for the way she presided over the Oscar Pistorius trial.
More formally, in foreign policy speeches Trump has made it plain that Africa is not a priority. His first major foreign policy speech as a candidate did not mention Africa at all.
This is a change we should note. Since avoiding disaster and democratising in 1994, South Africa has been a darling of successive US presidents. Bill Clinton was a frequent visitor who pioneered the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which was put in operation by George W Bush and has benefited South Africa immensely.
Bush, in turn, designated South Africa his “point man” on Africa, and President Barack Obama visited the country before and during his presidency, maintaining warm relationships. Every indication is that this will change under Trump.
The US relationship as we know it is over. Reciprocity will now be the name of the game. South African government officials and ANC politicians will have to rein in their populist talk of the US wanting our minerals or plotting regime change. Loose talk without hard proof will rile Trump and provoke his wrath, if his presidential campaign is anything to go by.
This man wants to spend a fortune building a wall to stop immigration from Mexico, and halt trade agreements which cost American jobs. He sounds not too focused on aid packages and the like. He seems more at home with the macho nationalism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia than the human rights-based approach of Germany’s Angela Merkel.
The South African pact since 1994 has urged decency, restraint and getting along for the common good.
Like Brexit, Trump’s victory shows a global climate where the other is sacrificed in the interest of the self. Were Trump’s tendencies to take hold here, it could unravel our pact. That is South Africa’s domestic challenge post-Trump: we must never become him.