Americans will be haunted for a long time by the gift they chose to give the world. For when you elect a US president, it is not for the Americans alone but for the entire world, given the country’s superpower status. Former president Barack Obama loved our country and admired our icon, former president Nelson Mandela, even more. We basked in the comfort that each time he mentioned Africa, South Africa would be top of mind. Not so much anymore. The US now has a leader whose knowledge of the world is confined to what he sees on the right wing channel Fox News.
And so it was President Donald Trump caught a six-minute insert on Fox News this week that convinced him that there was a “large-scale” genocide against white South African farmers. This prompted him to issue an instruction to State Secretary Mike Pompeo to look closely into the issue. Forget the fact that he has a large state department, a powerful Pentagon and an embassy in South Africa; Trump ignored any input from those and ran with Fox News propaganda. We do not know if he is contemplating following up with punitive measures for this imagined injustice.
It was yet another blight on a president slow in gathering data on important matters. But the ground was already fertile for a Trump-like character to take advantage of the poor and spread inconsistent messaging on this crucial issue. First, the ANC had resisted overtures from the Economic Freedom Fighters to support a motion in Parliament for expropriation without compensation. After painstaking debates, the party then resolved after the Nasrec conference to proceed with it on the proviso that it did not compromise agricultural production and food security. Earlier this year, it organised a land summit where the dominant opinion was that the Constitution already allows for expropriation, but the law had just never been tested in court.
Then, boom! After the Cabinet lekgotla earlier this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the Constitution would be amended to clarify the conditions under which such expropriation would happen. But still no one knows what these conditions are. Different leaders seem to make up policy each time they are interviewed. This week, in panic after Trump’s tweet, Ramaphosa wrote in the Financial Times to provide clarity. But frankly, we do not even know if his is the last word in an ANC he does not appear to lead.