It’s time for SA to come to terms with the fact that the Trump is never going to change and start looking elsewhere for trade partners.
For months, South Africa has been fighting a losing battle – trying to convince US President Donald Trump that the accusations he hurls at us, from alleged violations of minority rights to questions of sovereignty, are unfounded.
After eight months of appeals and diplomatic cajoling, Pretoria appears close to drawing a line.
The rhetoric from ANC leaders, from President Cyril Ramaphosa to Fikile Mbalula, has grown sharper, signalling growing impatience with Trump’s intransigence.
South Africa is a nation of many voices. Some urge Ramaphosa to persist, to keep knocking on Washington’s doors. But I am not among them.
Sovereignty demands respect and Trump has shown none. Minister Parks Tau’s fruitless rounds in Washington only underscored the futility of persuasion, as Trump’s hardline stance against Pretoria hardened further.
The truth is stark: no matter what tricks we attempt, Trump will not change his mind. South Africa has long been marked as a target.
While a military invasion is unlikely, unpredictability defines him – he flips allies into adversaries overnight.
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Canada, Mexico, Denmark, all once partners, were suddenly cast as foes. His decisions are coin tosses, gambits that almost always land the wrong way.
The reason he cannot resolve the war in Ukraine lies in his mindset.
Some describe him as politically bipolar – swinging between extremes, yet fused with a “Big Man” mentality that convinces him he towers above everyone else.
He is convinced he can overrun China and Russia, yet he doesn’t know their strategies, despite lacking a formal military alliance like Nato.
He must try… and he will get the biggest surprise of his life. I do not subscribe to the emerging notion the US is preparing to invade South Africa from its military base in neighbouring Botswana, the only Southern African Development Community country to host such a presence.
There are countries the US does not need a reason to attack because we will accept its action as the international community – Iran, Yemen, Venezuela and so on.
Still, with Trump, nothing can be ruled out. His unpredictability, paradoxically, has become his most predictable trait.
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When he has decided he wants regime change in Pretoria and to reinstall white rule, his fighter jets will be flying above our military bases in Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Kimberley with speed and fire from Botswana and/or elsewhere.
I believe, regardless of our actions, we stand to lose under Trump. He is a narcissist cloaked in the image of a leader of the world’s most democratic nation, wielding US military power recklessly.
For him, branding foreign leaders as “dictators” is justification enough to unleash aggression and for the world to accept it as necessary.
South Africa, however, cannot be cast in this mould. We remain the continent’s most democratic nation, extending rights even to those convicted of crimes.
Where the US and other democracies punish criminality harshly, sometimes with the death penalty, we treat offenders with dignity.
Rather than cling to the hope Trump might change, we must intensify our search for alternatives. India has just inked a landmark trade deal with the EU and struck another with Canada, loosening its grip from the US.
The time has come to break free from American strong-arming and chart a new path: one that looks east and builds enduring trade ties across Africa and Europe.
