“When did conquest become frowned upon?” someone asked me recently as conversation turned Trumpwards. “If a nation has the means, what’s stopping them from conquering new territory?” I was intrigued, and asked him what his plan was if an armed gang decided it wanted his Johannesburg house, but answer there came none, and I don’t blame him. It takes a lot of mental energy to sustain the dissonance required to champion property rights while also supporting their obliteration by force, and I suspect he needed a nap.
Besides, it probably felt like a non-debate to him: admirers of the New Kragdadigheid seem convinced that if they admire the boot loudly enough it will never step on them. Still, even the most devout must have had their hearts in their throats on Friday, as Donald Trump challenged Denmark’s territorial claims on Greenland, arguing that “the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean they own the land”. One can only imagine the shockwaves that ripped through Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the paler bits of South Africa as the US president seemed to imply that all colonial bets except for one were now off, and that unless your forebears were Puritans who landed on Plymouth Rock — or a Slovenian pageant queen who landed a dodgy visa — you don’t own squat.
To be fair, though, it’s not only the right that’s scrambling to keep up as geopolitics looks less like shifting tectonic plates than someone handing out amphetamines at a bumper-car ride. Consider, for example, the spectacle playing out in False Bay here at home, as South Africa hosts naval war-games with Russia, China and Iran codenamed “Will For Peace”. (Given the human rights records of the attendees, I can only assume this is a hastily redacted version of the original, slightly misspelled title — “Will Ignore Your Atrocities In Return For Peace, Or At Least a Peace of What’s Left Once The Smoke Clears” — but who knows?) According to reports, South Africa has tried to ask Iran to withdraw, no doubt fearing Washington’s ire, but on Monday the Iranian ship still seemed to be in False Bay.
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This is entirely understandable: diplomacy works slowly, and right now Tehran is busy with other things, like murdering hundreds — and possibly thousands — of protesters. Still, perhaps that anxiety was what persuaded the ANC to stage a humiliation ritual over the weekend at its dismal birthday celebrations in Moruleng, where a tiny crowd watched ANC cadres in camouflage uniforms roll slowly across the grass like sausage rolls spilled from an over-full plate in the VIP tent. I think it was meant to represent guerrilla manoeuvres, but it mostly looked like a kindergarten sack-race gone terribly wrong.
Either way, anyone who saw it now knows that the ANC is finished and that, no matter how blood-soaked our friends might be, this country is a threat to nobody but itself and possibly the catering team. Yes, in the end you don’t need a conqueror to be conquered. You just need to eat and eat and dream it all away.
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