Fear not about DA’s call to US

It seems extraordinary that there are people who seriously believe that the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) call to the US to help monitor our elections was an invitation to America to invade South Africa and put it under Western influence. Yet that is what independent political analyst Sandile Swana told us in his assessment of the DA approach to Washington.

South Africa is not – yet – an Afghanistan or an Iraq, which were invaded by the US and its European allies. And just because we annoy the Americans and the Europeans with our friendship with the world’s diplomatic polecat, Russia, does not mean that we stand to be recolonised by the West.

Why would we need to be, anyway? We already love all the accoutrements of Western culture, from rap music to BMW limousines…

What is worrying is that many people, like Swana, have bought into the anti-American narrative, which paints Washington as the world’s bully. That line runs that, because we didn’t whole-heartedly condemn Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and then had the temerity to drag US ally Israel to the International Court of Justice on charges of committing genocide in Gaza, we’ll see the Marines storming the Cape Town Waterfront.

There are probably some in the ANC who are nostalgic for the Cold War relationship with the Soviet who probably believe it, too.

US Embassy spokesperson David Feldmann said “SA is a sovereign democracy that runs its own electoral processes”, and that our electoral commission “has an excellent reputation for conducting free and fair elections.” In other words, none of our business.

That’s as it should be. The DA shouldn’t have made the approach in the first place, effectively questioning the integrity of the electoral commission. Some of those reacting, though, are seeing demons where there aren’t any.