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
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