By Phakamisa Mayaba
On the off-chance of catching a news clip of a measured and presidential Donald Trump, it is still nigh impossible to divorce the image of a property mogul celebrity from the besuited statesman at a pristine desk in the Oval Office, nonchalantly signing one executive order after another with a smug grin that almost looks like he’s murmuring; ‘take that, sucker!’ under his breath. Pretty cool to watch. Runs rings around any swagger a Biden, Mnangagwa or Xi Jinping could – even as a collective – pull off. If his predecessor’s twilight presidential moments were known for an insufferable drawl that left the gallery yawning, everybody appears to be wide awake for Potus’s next feverish edict.
Especially those scaly rooipiele with one foot in the East who still continue to do business with the US. They collude with BRICS on the one hand and, with no sense of irony, expect the passage of AGOA to remain open with the land of capitalism über alles. In Mar-a-Lago there appears to be little room for the undecided, or those who still believe in the leg-up of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or anything that sounds eerily similar to ‘forty acres and a mule.’ It’s the Trump way or the highway to tariffs, bullying tactics on national television, and your diplomatic envoy being summarily told to pack his bags and hit the road.
Those who’ve learnt to kiss the ring or flatter The Donald with placards as they march down to the US embassy in Pretoria, well, good news. Three months following that gesture of appreciation, the American dream is but a chartered flight away, nogal on a Sabbath evening. And what favourable omen to accompany anyone who identifies as a refugee fleeing persecution from a discriminatory dark-skinned government than a paid ticket to the land of beef jerky and Budweiser? And so, on the evening of 11 May, 59 Afrikaners took up the offer, slipping out with not much fanfare at the airport but much ado amongst the ever ‘twarring’ keyboard warriors on X.
With one writer calling the refugee claims a ‘fairy tale’, and Daily Maverick’s Richard Poplak reducing the exodus to ‘background extras in Maga’s noisy scam’, the cyber wars – particularly amongst the common folk – were a little more even-handed then the animalistic no-holds-barred fighting cages they tend to be. But President Cyril Ramaphosa didn’t quite exercise the soft-spoken decorum he usually assumes when he described the whole thing as a ‘cowardly act’ at the annual Nampo Harvest Day, the country’s ‘premier farm show’ where patrons, many of whom are white, tend to show up in private planes, helicopters, and massive bakkies and expensive SUVs.
As for the arrival of our ‘refugees’, it was a bit weird, un-Afrikaner, even. (To view a US State Department clip on Instagram, click here.) Clutching the Stars and Stripes instead of the Rainbow Flag (or even the Union Flag), they were treated to an audience with US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar, probably an unprecedented welcome for refugees anywhere in the world. No Bok paraphernalia, or combs stuck in socks. Nothing to say these were the Kooses and Piets whose ancestors had not only taught them to live, but also to die, in Africa.
Zooming in on some of the pictures, I’d hoped to catch sight of a veldskoen or a stick of biltong with a glistening strip of geelvet, and when I saw none of those, perhaps I’d hear the rolled Rs tripping off of the tongues of these, our recently departed countrymen. In short: what I was searching for was the one thing that has, in more ways than the military jackboot or economic muscle, made America truly great over the decades: soft power.
Through its crass capitalism and Hollywood, the US has flooded the world with American idealism and culture. The Museum of Communism in Prague once sat a floor above a McDonald’s and a casino. American junk food is the unrivalled leader in the world, blamed for everything from obesity to erectile dysfunction. The most substandard of American musicians go on to pack ampitheatres and enjoy ultra celebrity status across the globe. So too its relatively low-budget movie offerings. Tell me who was born in the 1990s and has never heard of Jean-Claude van Damme?
Baggy jeans, often hanging halfway down the derriere in the fashion of old-school rappers, are still de rigueur in townships as far-flung as Mozambique. Americans might look at personalities like the SA comedian Trevor Noah and start prattling on about an unlikely African miracle, but in truth, Trevor was raised on a combination of British-style schooling and American television. Like many of his peers, he watched the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, listened to Tupac or Michael Jackson, and probably knew that if there was any justice in the American criminal justice system, Nixon should’ve wound up in a joint like Alcatraz.
Such knowledge was not gleaned off the blackboard but in front of the television. The idea of America was always bigger than the physical military might of the superpower that flattens entire cities with its bombs. Americans are the good guys, and one should be wary of trusting the scheming Russians, perpetually plotting the world’s destruction. That is the Hollywood script many were raised on.
So waving our compatriots off as they boarded that plane towards the ‘land of opportunity,’ one couldn’t help but feel betrayed, by both America and onse manne. The facts have been belaboured in every article I’ve come across (except for those by that lobby group that started this thing to begin with). Land: Only 25% owned by blacks. Murder: most victims are black and poor. Crime: far worse in so-called black residential areas. Verdict: it’s more dangerous to be black and poor than to be white of the same station.
So, in his mission to spare the Afrikaners who are supposedly fleeing from the ‘very bad things’ happening in SA, Trump ensured that their departure would be fast-tracked. In return, our applicants no doubt lied about considering themselves ‘refugees’ in a country where there no apparent genocide being carried out. In interviews, they found themselves recalling any attacks they might have experienced to say, ‘you see, we’re just not safe here.’ And just like that, they can now start afresh in a first-world country with no loadshedding or BEE.
Forgive the critics for noticing streaks of privilege and subtle hints of racism in this equation. Would the response have been as swift if the applicants were Tsonga Shangaans claiming to flee Zulu persecution? Or for that matter if a few Coloured blokes identifying as Afrikaners (given they speak the same language and are mostly Christian) had applied? The entire episode roused sleeping recollections of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, former president of Sudan whom the SA government failed to arrest when an ICC warrant of arrest was out, back in 2015. If the US, wondered the keyboard warriors, is compliant with international law, how come Benjamin Netanyahu walks so freely around the White House?
But perhaps the unexpected line of argument was the one in the middle. The one that said, okay, if they wanted to leave, they could’ve just been a bit more honest about it. That, like everybody, they just wanted a better life with more opportunities for themselves and their children. In which case, it would’ve simply been a matter of mooi loop, kêrels. Despite the rampant social problems, others pointed out to SA’s ICC case against Israel, the country’s excellent showing at the recent World Athletics Relays, the proliferation of amapiano – the home-grown sound that’s taken the musical world by storm.
There are the Boks, the iconic Sarafina and the Lion King musicals. The ubiquitous Mandela, Noah, and all those fellow countrymen and uniquely South African offerings that the world is slowly starting to take notice of. The final analysis is that the nation that seeks to stand on the right side of history is the one whose singular duty is to ensure that its ‘soft power’ is the sort that inspires. The sort that considers the 59 migrants as 59 too many. The alternative display of power usually means too many dead bodies and unnecessary enemies. And the Rainbow Nation has recently gotten too much of both.
FEATURED IMAGE: A frieze at the Voortrekker Monument outside Pretoria. Image: Flickr.
This is an edited version of an article which first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.