At this point there can be no doubt that South Africa is firmly embedded on Donald Trump’s hit list of countries he loathes. These are countries he bad-mouths at every opportunity. Countries marked for vengeful action because they see the world differently to him and want to chart their own independent path into the future.
He detests any talk of racial redress for blacks and women in his own country, he resents South Africa for similar policies for black people and for daring to choose its own friends in the world. Pretoria’s talk of multilateralism and a rules-based global order (where the voice of every country, irrespective of size, matters) is like a red rag to a bull. We are right in there, alongside Trump’sbêtes noiressuch as Iran (which he’s “watching very carefully”), Cuba (which is “ready to fall”) and Colombia (whose president must “watch his ass”).
For “recalcitrant” governments, they resort to bloody invasions and regime change. For leaders who won’t toe the line or are regarded as a threat to US interests in any way, the punishment can include murder, as in the case of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. Saddam Hussein they captured and then turned over to his killers.
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Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is but the latest casualty. Trump’s undisguised modus operandi is now obvious to all: bald-faced lies (reminiscent of Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction) and threats followed by violent action. In the case of Venezuela, his threadbare excuse for seizing Maduro was because he was a “narco terrorist”, but that was belied when his own actions revealed one of the key motives for the invasion — control of that country’s oil.
No sooner had Maduro’s abductors delivered him to a New York prison than the US president, rather than seeking out drug factories, declared: “This oil will be sold at its market price and that money will be controlled by me, as president of the United States of America…” Vice-President JD Vance chimed in, telling Fox News: “We control the energy resources and we tell the regime, you’re allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve America’s national interest.” The US’s violation of international law while seeking to impose the law of the jungle among nations was rightly met with condemnation in South Africa and elsewhere. Not that Trump would have been listening. Trump’s hostile intentions towards us have been telegraphed for a while, with him repeatedly and unashamedly spreading the untruths of “very bad things” happening here and, against hard facts, of Pretoria committing “genocide” against white Afrikaners.
As the invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of its president have demonstrated, we ignore Trump’s threats at our peril. They are not just idle talk, but the result of deeply held, if wrong-headed, beliefs.
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