South Africa's "very badly treated people"

 

Michael - Alternate Thursdays

I thought of calling this “Setting the Record Straight”, but no one even tries to do that anymore. Also, most people are sick to death of Trumpian politics (even some Republicans are starting to feel that way apparently), so I just want to make a few comments about the South African situation. Not that South Africa is blameless or perfect, but there really is no factual basis to any of the anti-South Africa claims that Trump has spouted.

Zapiro's take on expropriation without compensation

Apparently, “South Africa is treating some people very badly”. Well, you could argue that, but very few of the people are White. No, Whites are not being driven off their farms by organized murder squads aiming to take over their land. That there are farm murders – and far too many of them - is beyond question. Generally, these are gangs interested in stealing things they can sell or use – guns and cash being the top of the list. Violent crime has decreased over the last year, but it’s way too high in South Africa. Unfortunately, certain right-wing White organizations at home and abroad like to put their own spin on this.

Much has been made of expropriation of land here. Every country has a procedure for expropriating land that is required in the national interest, and there are various steps involved in establishing a fair price. But a recent, and perhaps not very well-advised piece of legislation, allows expropriation without compensation in certain specific circumstances. The circumstances are quite restrictive with clauses such as “where an owner has abandoned the land by failing to exercise control over it despite being reasonably capable of doing so”.

However, this was a marvelous gift for the said right wing organizations. “It’s the start of a Zimbabwe style land grab,” they trumpeted. (No, Jeff, that’s not a pun. But they certainly did make sure that their fellow travelers in the US heard all about it.)

No land has been expropriated without compensation. The willing buyer/willing seller model is the norm here. The fact that land redistribution is way behind where it ought to be is largely due to the cumbersome process and slow progress of negotiation and court cases. Nothing could be further from the Zimbabwe model.

So, who are these “very badly treated” White people? Maybe people who find it hard to get jobs because there are equally or better qualified Black people who may get preference. In the previous regime, low-skilled jobs of various types were reserved for Whites only. That made it easy to get jobs if you were White. People were “treated very badly”, but they were Black people. I don’t recall the US offering a fast track route to refugee status for those people. Or did I miss something?

Another Trump grievance is that South Africa has joined with the BRICS group of nations. He has fulminated about BRICS trying to create some sort of currency to challenge the dollar. This is while he supports cryptocurrency to do just that. BRICS has denied any intention to create a currency. It's an alternate block attractive to South Africa in case the US loses interest in influence in Africa. Not such a bad idea. It just did. On the other hand, as one of the founding members, Russia is apparently fine in BRICS although South Africa is not. Vladimir Putin is entitled “to defend himself” against an unprovoked attack from Ukraine, after all. 

So what will the Trump approach to South Africa actually do to South Africa? Well, the destruction of US AID – a largely well-managed and valuable aid agency – will hurt. Its main contribution here was subsidizing medication for HIV positive individuals. SA will have to find the money itself, money that could have been used for other development imperatives. We can’t complain about that. It’s our problem. The loss of AID will affect many third world and developing countries very much worse than that. No doubt southern Africa’s favorable trade deal will be the next to go. We’ll have to live with that too. Probably Europe and the East are more realistic markets anyway in this US-isolationist era. Will it hurt? Certainly.

Apparently, all this may produce a DOGE dividend of a dollar or two to every man, woman and child in the US. May I be so bold as to suggest that it could be donated to NGO aid agencies trying to prevent people starving in Somalia and elsewhere around the world.

Finally, will all these White “badly treated” people be flocking to the US? I doubt it. But if, against the odds, a few are allowed in through Trump’s back door, I wish them Bon Voyage.