It’s not surprising, given that – as US President Donald Trump repeatedly tells us – America is the greatest country in the universe, the US and its people have wandered in and out of my life over the years. When I was at primary school, I had a terrible, and sadly unrequited, crush on an American girl on our class. Her parents were missionaries with the Africa Evangelical Fellowship, who had a little community up the road from us.
I would ride past the place on my new bike, hoping for just a glimpse… It didn’t even bother me when the object of my adoration took first prize at school, forcing me into second. Later, as my knowledge and understanding grew, I found my father also had an admiration for “the Yanks”, having been attached to a US Air Force (USAF) fighter-bomber wing as part of 2 Squadron, South African Air Force (SAAF), during the Korean War. Two things stuck in his mind: the only country in the world that would go to war with a Coke machine in the supplies.
And, he was intrigued by the fact that their black pilots were all still treated as second-class citizens and kept as non-commissioned, rather than full, officers. He was about to leave the SAAF and join the USAF in California – thanks to a recommendation letter from the CO of the American wing – when he met my mother in Cape Town. Years later, as a young journalist, I did some “stringing” (freelancing) for the Voice of America’s English-to-Africa radio service, reporting on events in Namibia.
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The people I dealt with in Washington were intelligent, all-round nice people. And, even when they had to tell me they couldn’t run anything too critical of President Ronald Reagan and his “constructive engagement” policy with South Africa, they did it gently. And they paid me anyway.
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