OP-ED: Donald Trump - South Africa's Black Swan

Donald Trump - South Africa's Black Swan

A black swan event is underway in South Africa. Trump was widely predicted to win a second term in the White House. Almost no one predicted that within a fortnight of taking office, his administration would have South Africa so firmly in its crosshairs over a whole range of issues.

Many would argue that truth has been the first casualty, but this is a superficial and therefore inaccurate assessment of the situation. Breitbart editor-at-large, Joel Pollak, is widely rumoured to become the US's next Ambassador to South Africa. Pollak understands the US and South Africa equally well, having worked for both Tony Leon and Helen Zille.

Pollak gave South Africa some valuable advice this week when he wrote, "His [Trump's] rhetoric isn’t always accurate, but he is almost always right about the direction in which action is needed."

For 31 years, the rhetoric of the ANC-led establishment has been anything but accurate too, but up until now it has largely gone unchallenged by the international community, at least formally. That has now dramatically changed, and Trump has thrown down the gauntlet.

In the first two weeks of his administration, South Africa has been challenged on property rights, race-based policy, its international bedfellows, and its selective support for self-determination.

In response, South Africa has been declared a threat to US national security, all aid has been cut, and Afrikaners have been designated 'discriminated persons' and offered refugee status in the US.

South African Establishment not being honest

Initially stunned, the political establishment, supported by the mainstream media, AgriSA CEO Johann Kotze, and the Democratic Alliance, rallied to launch a fightback. Ironically, their line of attack was to challenge the superficial nature of Trump's statements on expropriation without compensation, asserting that the truth was fundamentally different. In doing so, however, they too responded with such superficiality that their response was itself dishonest.

Using Pollak's analogy, Trump may have been inaccurate, but at least he was heading in the right direction. The establishment, which now firmly includes the DA, may have been pedantically accurate, but in doing so they were most definitely moving in the wrong general direction.

Any proper analysis of the rapidly unfolding events in Washington requires that the issues being raised are dealt with substantively.

The starting point of that analysis must be that the current political order, which commenced in 1994, was premised upon a negotiated settlement. The Constitution was the terms of the agreement. The essence of the current dispute is that the ANC has breached that contract, almost certainly legalistically if judged by an impartial court (which the ConCourt is not), and unquestionably in spirit.

When that Constitution declared that South Africa was a state founded on Non-racialism (section 1(b)), no reasonable person would conclude that this was supposed to result in a state with more race-laws than at any time during Apartheid. And when it declared that no one may have their property expropriated without receiving just and equitable compensation (section 25(3)), no reasonable person would conclude that compensation could reasonably mean nothing.

It is therefore important to note that the Trump administration has correctly identified that South Africa is a state where the government is not acting in good faith, and that the establishment is incorrect to assert that there is no issue here and that the US should move along.

The Expropriation Act, which for the first time explicitly allowed for 'nil compensation', was signed into law on 23 January 2025. The intent of the Act is specifically clear, and permitting the state to expropriate property without paying compensation (which is precisely what nil compensation means) is one of the Act's stated aims. Trump initially articulated his opposition to the Act on 2 February 2025, just 10 days after the Act's finalisation.

Clearly, widespread expropriation without compensation had not taken place within those 10 days, and Trump was incorrect to suggest that it had. But he was right to the extent that it undoubtedly will; that was the whole point of passing the Act. The Government (including the DA), the media, and Kotze were correct to say widespread expropriation had not yet taken place, but very wrong to give the deliberate impression that it was not going to.

Advice to the US Government

If I were able to give the US Government one piece of advice, it would be this. South Africa is a society which is fundamentally divided into two opposing groups. Roughly 70% of the population are African nationalists. To varying degrees, this group, who are overwhelmingly black, are willing to tolerate the presence of ethnic minorities, but only on the condition that they know their place - they are in South Africa as guests of the black majority and must behave as such. This group revels in race-based policies which favour them and are greatly enthused about the prospect of white South Africans being deprived of their property without compensation. Their rationale is that whites stole the land in the first place and expropriation with nil compensation is a right and just response.

This group holds political sway. They have perpetually elected the ANC, and when the ANC began to lose its lustre, they voted for MK and the EFF who wish to enact more extreme versions of the same policies.

The result is that 'Race-based policy' and 'Expropriation without compensation' are hills upon which the ANC are willing to die. Not only are they the core tenets of ANC ideology, but they are the only means by which the ANC can hold onto their now tenuous grip on power. No amount of US sabre-rattling will change this. To the contrary, being attacked by a 'Western neo-colonial bully' plays directly into the ANC's hands. They have perfected the art of victimhood and how to benefit from it electorally.

I believe the US should focus its efforts on supporting the remaining 30% of the population. These are the US's natural allies (which in the case of Afrikaners, the US has already identified). They are pro-western and predominantly ethnic minorities. The US doesn't need to break the African Nationalists; it needs to empower its pro-western allies.

It can do this in two ways: supporting Western Cape autonomy, and supporting Afrikaners' self-determination.

As the US president's executive order made explicitly clear, the US is acting to protect its national security interests. In practice, this means that the US wants South Africa aligned to it, rather than to China and Russia.

The reality is, for the reasons I have already explained, this is not possible. The ANC will never switch their allegiance, and any successful attempt to force them to do so would lead to a change in government where the incoming administration would be even more antagonistic to the US and the West.

Perhaps not by chance, a report was published in Washington this week by the 'Yorktown Foundation for Freedom' warning the US government that it cannot ignore China's desire to establish a Naval Base in Simonstown in the Western Cape. It didn't mention Cape Independence as a logical solution, but then it didn't have to. Whilst the Western Cape remains a part of South Africa, Simonstown is under the control of BRICS. Cape Independence would place it under the control of an independent Cape strongly aligned to the West.

Similarly, Afrikaners are a Western people. In April 1994, four days before the first democratic elections, the US countersigned an agreement between the ANC and Afrikaners - the Afrikaner Accord. It recognised the right and legitimate pursuit of Afrikaners to self-determination. This specifically included territorial self-determination. As a result, a Volkstaatraad was founded to develop viable proposals. It was unilaterally defunded by the ANC-led government in 1999 and has remained in abeyance ever since.

Cape Independence and Afrikaner self-determination are both well-developed political propositions in domestic South African politics. Strong support from the US would likely be decisive in allowing the Western Cape people and Afrikaners to realise territorial self-determination. The result would be the hollowing out of the South African state and a fundamental shift in regional power away from support for Russia and China, and towards the US and the West.

The next few weeks are going to be fascinating. No one can predict what the outcome will be. The only certainty is change. Welcome to the Black Swan.

This article was first published on Politicsweb: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/comment/trump--south-africas-black-swan

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