How far can the US Right go to enforce its will?

Dr FM Lucky Mathebula 

Throughout history, the US has consistently exerted its influence on other democracies, employing a range of strategies from soft power, where it asserts ideational superiority, to hard power, where it dictates policy options through it hard power. This pattern of behaviour underscores the extent to which the US is willing to enforce its will and trumpet its national interests.

Since 1910, South Africa has been a standout constitutional order, asserting its intellectual independence on the international stage. Influenced by General Smuts's internationalist worldview, it played a key role in the formation of the League of Nations and later the United Nations. OR Tambo's internationalist perspective on the liberation struggle established the ANC as a global anti-apartheid force, eventually leading to its influential role in the Non-Aligned Movement and the Global South.

RSA influenced pursuing a human rights-based world through the 1923 Bill of Rights adopted at the ANC's National Conference. Its politics of African solutions for African problems, interestingly an attribute shared by the ANC even if it was opposed to the apartheid state, was on display when it exited the British Commonwealth and declared itself a Republic in 1931. Consequently, RSA established its monetary area, currency, stock exchange, nuclear capability, and scientific institutions that undergirded its industrial and cultural revolution. This was notwithstanding racial discrimination as its vector of ideation and analysis. 

In the international space where the bulk of the struggle to isolate RSA in the international community, the person-to-person diplomatic prowess of the anti-apartheid movement did not only liquidate apartheid but global racism as the most common source of almost all crimes against humanity. While it suited the context, genocide was defined broadly enough to include what is or has unfolded in GAZA since 2023. By managing the transition from apartheid through the Harare Declaration and several Minutes that preceded CODESA and the 1984-1996 Constituent Assembly, RSA cemented its ideation prowess and determined its political destiny. 

The political settlement between 1990 and 1996 happened when RSA's mineral production peaked. The opportunity to play in a globalised economy dictated the need for a different foreign policy. This policy reflected the multiple journeys RSA's political formation has had to go through. As a post-conflict democracy with allies that still had to complete their liberation struggles, RSA was poised for a tumultuous international relations environment. The moral high ground that came with how the country settled its disputes made it a moral superpower capable of liquidating any global power that pursued racism and apartheid. The convergence of RSA politics into the preamble of its 1996 Constitution meant any form of racism, disguised or brazen, is an affront to the post-1996 freedoms all must ensure all enjoy. 

This is a strength the US and other global powers know and are aware of its international appeal. It is a strength that would later upend the balance of forces in the Middle East and reposition the justice and human rights dimension of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. It is a terrain of soft power deployment, and the USA knows it cannot afford to enter into tension with RSA. The Trump opportunity, where there is an expectation of irrationality from within the White House, is a moment the global rightwing and racist movements will use to advance their morally unjustifiable policies. One such policy is the return to separate development, the lighter version of apartheid, where feasible, a prospect that should concern us all. 

The renewed calls for self-determination of ethnic minorities around the World and the demand for concessions on matters that have already been agreed to and entrenched in the constitutions of countries are reopened to take advantage of the Trump moment. The transactional character of diplomatic relations the Trump administration is pursuing has opened space for alums of rightwing cultural institutions to transact on what would otherwise have been resolved through institutions designed to do so in several democracies, particularly South Africa. The Ellon-Musk-in-the-White House dividend might find itself spewing a reversal of the social cohesion gains of the 1990-1996 political accord and constitutional settlement. This prospect should make us all cautious.

 

Whilst the Ellon Musk-RSA Network is a risk in itself, it happens when the ANC, arguably the nexus of politics in RSA, is undergoing one of its short termist or myopic succession battles about who succeeds Cyril Ramaphosa. Without due regard to the geopolitical balance of forces and the changed fortunes of the global rightwing movement, the succession battle rhetoric has been feeding on the racial fear index to a level of the BELA Act and the Expropriation Act are being grossly misinterpreted.

 

The current geopolitical climate, characterised by the Trump transactional moment, poses significant risks for South Africa. The US's appetite for energy, particularly oil, manganese, coltan, lithium, and other minerals crucial for battery cell development, makes South Africa's most industrialised economy in a mineral-rich Africa a prime target. The country's pursuit of black economic empowerment policies, rooted in its democratic order, further complicates the situation, potentially putting it at odds with new mineral extraction oligarchs from the East and West.

 

To impose its will, the US has displayed how heartless it can be in pursuit of its national, geopolitical, and geostrategic interests. The destruction of Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and several other proxy wars is no different from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. South Africa is no different from these countries. The instability of the Suez Canal has made RSA a geostrategic asset pursued by the hotting Cold War between China and the US. 

 

The African war mercenary industry anchored in RSA and its global reach and networks have never made RSA so vulnerable to destabilisation if it does not toe the line of the radical right. The immaturity of RSA rightwing civil society movements and their insatiable appetite to hate and mistrust the liquidation of racial supremacy power represented by the ANC has made them a means to an end they did not sign up for. The global rightwing movement used their grievances as a means to an end. They must now review the true nature of their discontent. These are suitable conditions to open gaps for annexation forces to move quickly. 

 

JUST THINKING ALOUD WITH MY KEYBOARD. AS THE MIND FLEW SO DID THE KEYBOARD RESPOND