By Phakamisa Mayaba
If you thought Donald J. Trump is the big kahuna, you’ve obviously been paying scant attention to his former geeky sidekick. Since the much-publicised first visit with his son to the Oval Office, Elon Musk, the cantankerous brainiac, MAGA benefactor, and once-celebrated other half of Washington’s most famous bromance – has left the jury out on whether he was cowboy enough to truly Make America Great Again.
Zero street swagger, yet more than 200 million people (the only person on Earth to reach that threshold) X users hang on his every word. His tweets are known to add or wipe off billions of stock overnight. He tells journalists off, sometimes with cynical profanity. That is to say, he’s torn off pages from the Potus 2.0 handbook, and is a younger, more unhinged version of The Donald who clearly wants to make his presence felt.
From the get-go as a glorified deployee in Trump’s unofficial department of government efficiency (Doge), Musk took to brutally doing the president’s bidding, namely cutting spending and jobs within the federal government. He never missed an opportunity to praise the president’s house-cleaning, didn’t clutch at his pearls at the severing of Pepfar, and did not shy away from recommending friends to high-end institutions like NASA.
He’d pumped nearly $300 million into Trump’s election soiree, so perhaps it was high time they thanked him for it. For him it seemed more a matter of sound bottom-line economics than politics. The two are years apart: When Musk took over Twitter, he immediately fired 80 per cent (more than 6000) employees, but when he tried doing that to federal employees, he quickly learnt that, in this arena, illusions of exceptionalism don’t get you much except lots of litigation.
And perhaps he was moving too fast, and fast moves on issues of bread and butter, or looking like you’re getting too big for your boots, often invite the scorn of the underclass who often don’t have much to lose when they rise up and storm the Capitol Building. Or for that matter when they turn full arsonist on anything that looks like a Tesla. And that’s what they did, subjected the company’s showrooms and vehicles to violent action.
So perhaps it’s out of mutual frustration that Trump and Musk have been airing their dirty line in public. Out of the blue, Musk had no hang-ups about calling Trump’s ‘beautiful’ tax bill ‘insane,’ adding it would punch trillions of debt into the US treasury. Or taking broadsides at the president for his connection with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, even posting images of the two of them together. Trump was never going to let any of it slide as he took to threatening to ‘look into’ deporting Musk as well as setting Doge on him. ‘Doge’ warned the president, ‘is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible?’ Savage stuff, innit?
Now, a little closer to home. During his White House visit, our own president, Cyril Ramaphosa, wasn’t given due credit. Here is the man who had to grin in the face of these sulking bullies. Trump calling for the presentation on genocide on one hand, and also the stack of corroborating newspaper clippings. Elon shooting Ramaphosa a prolonged, icy stare on the other. This after Musk had openly ranted about a supposed white genocide leading up to the visit.
Then, as if to show that Ramaphosa was small fry, he rejected any offer to operate Starlink in SA if it came with having to surrender some 30 per cent of his business to a BEE partner.
It’s safe to assume that Musk would’ve touched on these ‘racist’ laws with Trump, who has found similar DEI efforts in his own country unpalatable. And so, in outlandish Trump fashion, we woke to news of 30 per cent tariffs being imposed on SA exports to the US, That’s what he’s been saying since April, but the deal will – according to a series of letters to various governments posted (dig this!) on Trump’s Truth Social account – only come into effect on 1 August. Not even Ramaphosa’s pro-Trump envoy earlier this year was able to twist the president’s arm away from the deep-seated beef he maintains towards the country.
On the other hand, the minister of communications has been at it, crafting what is seen as a custom-made bill clearly aimed at appeasing Musk and, naturally, the MAGAs. There’s no shortage of those who think the special treatment could spell bad news for the nation’s claims to sovereignty. Trade unions and the Black Business Council have come out to say it will have dire consequences for the local digital economy. ‘Empowerment without ownership is meaningless’ has been the rallying cry of the dissenting voice, with online petitions doing the rounds, and legal expects are concerned about the slippery precedent this might set.
On the other hand, investors and the money guys are gleefully rubbing hands in anticipation. Already, they are imagining the Karoo as the desert-like setting for SpaceX (which Starlink falls under) rockets. And the Northern Cape economy being given a much-needed boost.
Reportedly, Starlink has since offered to invest more than R2 billion in the country’s economy in a bid to ‘working around’ BEE policies. Equity equivalent investment programmes (EEIPs), which have been recently gazetted by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, might be the ‘backdoor exemption’ they’ve been hoping for.
On the face of it, according to communications minister Solly Malatsi, the EEIPs would ‘attract investment’ as well as counter the fact that the 30 per cent BEE ownership requirement for foreign investors ‘did not allow companies to contribute to transformation goals in ways other than traditional ownership.’
According to the department, these alternative investments would be instrumental in creating infrastructure support, jobs, and research and innovation, among others. One must wonder whether these EEIPs will not disadvantage local telecommunications companies which must still adhere to strict equity policies. Vodacom has been among the first to come out strongly in the hope of thwarting the seeming double standards.
All this said, one wonders whether these are really the sort of tappers SA should be boogey-ing down with. In a scathing piece, our Toverview friend R. W. Johnson has taken a wary view of SA’s empowerment policies, and he is very cynical about the people who benefit from them. Given that many contribute little or nothing to the progress and profitability of the entities they are supposed to manage, it’s hard to fault Bill. In less articulate language, we’ve often reached similar conclusions.
If we’re working from a premise of redress, could we at least agree that empowerment is a necessary evil to mending previous injustice? Perhaps a rethinking of the current, opaque, methods of fostering said employment? Perhaps instead of elite individuals, why not empower thousands of previously marginalised individuals? Mbeki’s idea of a concentrated black middle class has reserved true empowerment for a connected handful.
I’d say, maybe the duty of our times is to reconsider the current laws, and reject those that exacerbate the creation of an ultra-classist society. Here at home, people of differing political persuasions may get it, but I’m not sure our tech-expat and his orange-haired buddy would. And, given what they did to their once admired ally Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I’m even more pessimistic about thinking that they care about anything except fawning reviews.
Clearly, the genocide accusation was a distraction from Trump’s core issues with us: BRICS and Israel. And now he’s trying to make us choose. Indeed, may we remember those friends who’ve been there when many weren’t, and choose very carefully.