If you were surprised by US President Donald Trump’s announcement last week that no American official would attend the G20 summit in South Africa on November 22 and 23, you haven’t been paying attention. As I have said for a year now, there is little South Africa can do about the US’s irrational, tantrum-driven president.
South Africa is one of the few places Trump can identify on a map of Africa, and he has been on a campaign to hurt the country since his inauguration in January. The G20 was too good a chance to pass up, and so, as he realised that sending Vice-President JD Vance would be an acknowledgment that South Africa is indeed a player in global affairs, he pulled the plug on all US officials’ attendance.
He had not thought about it before Friday. He had not strategised or planned it. He just posted it on social media, and his minions in the administration fell over each other to show him how loyal they could be by repeating his falsehoods that “Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered”. If he cared about “slaughter”, he would say something about Sudan, but he won’t. He needs to divert attention from the US government shutdown and the Epstein scandal.
Trump was always going to do something around the G20 summit to rain on South Africa’s parade. If it was not last Friday’s stunt, it would have been something else. Soon his right-wing, January 6 insurrection-supporting ambassador will be in Pretoria, and more performative tantrums will be thrown about South Africa. Only those who believe in fairies think there can be a “resetting” of the relationship between South Africa and the Trump administration. What Trump wants is for South Africa to submit to him.
South Africans who admire this man need to know that most of their fellow citizens can see them clearly for who they are
For South Africa, there are two things to reflect on. The first is that trying to appease Trump will not work. He is a bully and will continue with his actions because that is what bullies do. He will be enraged by the fact that world leaders will be in South Africa for the summit, so expect him to throw his usual childish insults and issue his usual threats. We all know by now that he is only ever temperate when faced with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The second reflection for South Africa is that when Trump issued his Truth Social post, there were whoops of delight among many South African peddlers of his falsehoods about a “white genocide” and persecution of Afrikaners. It is time all of us had a tough conversation about this. What does it say for anyone to be a fervent supporter of Trump and his attacks on South Africa?
Trump’s supporters refuse to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. They have failed for five years to produce a shred of evidence that Trump was robbed, as they claim. When South Africans support such a man, what does it say about them?
In the days before he renewed his attacks on South Africa last week, Trump claimed the US “may very well go into that now disgraced country [Nigeria], guns-a-blazing”, apparently because there is mass killing of Christians in that country. There isn’t a single credible outlet that has not debunked this myth, pointing out that in fact Christians and Muslims alike are the victims of jihadists in that country. The falsehoods are from the same playbook as the allegations of a “white genocide” in South Africa. The Washington Post’s fact-checking team documented 30,573 false or misleading claims by Trump during his first term from 2017 to 2021.
There is very little to admire about Trump. His failings — from his claims of grabbing women by their private parts to the extraordinary enrichment of his family while he is in office — have been comprehensively documented.
South Africans who admire this man need to know that most of their fellow citizens can see them clearly for who they are. As Trump’s masked men separate children from their parents, and his country becomes increasingly less free, many South Africans will remember what their compatriots chose at this time when honesty and moral clarity were needed.
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