SA climbs out of sh*thole
When Donald Trump announced his vacation of the White House, he deliberately failed to acknowledge his replacement, Joe Biden, but only talked about the incoming “new administration” – as if the new administration has no leader.
That’s because he believes the November elections were stolen, his refrain since he lost to Biden, a humble former senator from Delaware and ex-vice-president under Barack Obama. This despite the fact that he lost numerous court challenges against the poll results and recounts of votes at states like Georgia.
Besides the rightwing extremists who supported him, even some of the Republicans do not agree with him and supported the president’s impeachment by them. Even Senate majority leader Mich McConnell backed the impeachment and this week stressed that Trump provoked the mob riots that resulted in the violent trashing of the Capitol and killing of at least six people, including a police officer.
It’s telling because McConnell vigorously opposed Trump’s first impeachment. He led the Senate rejection of former president Barack Obama’s appointment to replace the late Antonin Scalia with Merrick Garland in 2016 as supreme court federal justice, but supported Trump’s nomination, Amy Coney Barrett, last year.
Trump wanted Barrett do the dirty work for him in case of a constitutional crisis emerging from the elections. But there was no crisis and the only clear statement made in the move was to put a conservative judge to replace a liberal justice, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The violence was the most dangerous threat the American political system every faced, with Congressmen and women running for their lives in the corridors of the parliamentary house as Trump extremists bayed for their blood. Even Vice-President Mike Pence was almost lynched, only escaping by a whisker after Trump badmouthed him earlier to the irate crowd. His last words in the White House on Tuesday were: “The movement we started is only beginning…”
There is little Trump can be proud of. He lumped most of Africa as part of “sh*t-hole” countries, a term he used against the poor and developing nations. Under him extremists, including those from South Africa, thrived. The policies that were initiated by his predecessors around SA’s HIV programme were not pursued with vigour.
Africa never topped his agenda but was at the bottom. He only deployed his ambassador to SA early last year – the year of the election.
Things are promising to change completely under Joe Biden. He was an anti-apartheid champion and led the debates against the Nationalist regime in the Senate. He often took then-Secretary of State George Shultz to task for supporting the regime instead of the black majority. Because of that stance – besides the fact that his son married a South African – SA should be top priority for the new administration.
Although US ambassador Lana Marks was a Trump appointee, she normalised relations between US and SA. Trump did not show a particular negative attitude towards South Africa during her term save for a few land reform tweets.
There are more prospects and hopes for South Africa under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.