President Ramaphosa’s bluster about “we won’t be bullied” in response to comments by US President Donald Trump is all very well and I am sure plays well among the ANC comrades and in the public gallery − but I don’t think the ANC realises the extent of the change which is occurring in the West.
No longer are they facing guilt-ridden liberals who apologise at the first opposition. They are facing tough realists who are going to make decisions on what they believe to be right, regardless of what progressive governments like the ANC think. Similarly, it is all very well for the RSA media to make snide and denigrating comments about ‘polishing Trump’s ego’ and ‘he always listens to last person who talks to him.’ With one comment, Trump has put South Africa (and probably much of the world) under notice, and has generated a huge amount of discussion. Trump need not be taken literally but he must be taken seriously.
You underestimate him at your peril. As soon as the political classes and the media commentariat realise that, the better it will be for South Africa.
What is happening currently is not just a change in US government, it is a movement to reform the post-war liberal world order.
One of Trump’s first acts was to overturn a presidential order dating back to the 1960s Johnson administration which enshrined the idea of racial affirmative action. This is no accident. What we are seeing is a move to dismantle the liberal social engineering that has plagued the world for the last 60 years.
As can be seen from the early actions against DEI, the people in charge of the US no longer believe that it is efficient or moral to make decisions based on race. And Trump has made clear that he will act in the wider world against what he believes to be wrong. He is not an isolationist; he is going to be involved where needed to re-order the world system.
So where does that leave South Africa with its disastrous policymaking based on race? Ramaphosa can talk to Musk about ‘setting the record straight’, but nobody is going to be fooled into believing that South Africa’s race-based system does anything other than further enrich the ANC elite, or that the ANC has abandoned the National Democratic Revolution. And if Joel Pollak is appointed as ambassador, the ANC’s problems will become even worse. Pollak recently stated that the world is tired of South Africa’s focus on redressing the past. Perhaps the South African government should start thinking about how it is going to deal with an assertive and expert dealmaker, and perhaps the first step is to rethink its legal action against Israel.
Blathering
I wonder if the DA will realise that the new US administration hugely strengthens its hand, and whether it will have the sense, toughness and courage to use the change to improve South Africa, rather than blathering on that the Expropriation Act is not so bad after all and compromising on the NHI. The liberal record of standing up to progressive extremism is not good. In the Western world, liberals have been powerless against the progressive onslaught, and it was left to the new conservatives to fight against cancel culture, race-based policies, the physical mutilation of young, confused children and wokeness.
While the WEF was giving a standing ovation to a hysterical Scandinavian teenage climate activist, it was a commentator, Konstantin Kisin, who pointed out that when his children throw a tantrum, he explains to them that their behaviour is unacceptable and sends them to their bedroom.
While the liberals led by Nancy Pelosi were ‘taking the knee’ in honour of a violent convicted criminal thug and calling for defunding the police, it was conservatives, especially black conservatives, who spoke out against the damage done to communities (especially the black communities) and the nation by the BLM riots. It was conservatives who decried the corruption of elite universities. While Angela Merkel was saying ‘we can do this’ and admitting hundreds of thousands of people who did not share western culture or values, it was conservative voices like Douglas Murray who warned against the damage it would cause.
While the previous Dutch government was planning to destroy large parts of Dutch agriculture, and Germany was shutting down its nuclear power plants, it was conservatives who were warning against the climate hysteria and the insanity of net zero. Do we in South Africa have conservatives who have the balls to take up the fight? There are a few organisations that spring to mind. Perhaps, as is happening in the Western world, conservatives rather than liberals now need to take the lead in opposing failed progressive policies.
Rotten
The current liberal world order is rotten, and there is a re-assertion of Western power to reform it. For the moment it is mainly in the US, but it will not be long before European governments (the CSU and AfD in Germany, Marine le Pen in France, Nigel Farage in the UK, Georgia Meloni in Italy, Viktor Orban in Hungary) and governments in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia (and Canada with Poilievre!) start following suit.
Trump is not going to be intimidated by liberal international organisations like the UN Human Rights Council or the International Criminal Court or the World Health Organisation. Soon a number of European countries will no longer be intimidated by the European Court of Human Rights either. The disclosures about USAID resulting from the DOGE investigations have shown clearly how progressives corrupt liberal institutions, and you can be sure that a close look at the EU and international organisations will show the same.
Be assured: we will in the future hear clearly from Elise Stephanik, Trump’s UN ambassador. ‘But’, they say, ‘don’t worry; we have BRICS to support us.’ Sure! China, which is facing a deteriorating economy, social unrest and a demographic disaster; Russia, which is conducting a stupid and debilitating war; Brazil. which is embroiled in its domestic problems and doesn’t seem very interested, and India, which, considering its spiritual heritage and history, should play a far more important role in the world but is unlikely to put its relations with South Africa before that of the US. The less said the better about Iran, our newest BRICS member. Let us see where BRICS, an association of the dysfunctional, stands in a few years’ time.
A subtext of the conservative reformation is the idea that the focus on human rights has become toxic and dysfunctional. The concept of human rights is a Christian one based on the belief that man is made in the image of God and therefore contains a spark of divinity. The post-war idea of expanding human rights of equality before the law, equality of opportunity, equal voting rights and protection from arbitrary prosecution and persecution was a hugely important move forward in human history.
Progressive doctrines
But this has been perverted by progressive doctrines of ‘equality of outcomes’ which requires social engineering and discrimination. It has become the right to housing and employment and the right not to be offended. It has become the right of minority groups to dictate to the majority. And it has resulted in inefficiencies being introduced into societies by putting DEI before competence.
When young people believe that they have the right to deny physical biology by ‘identifying’ as a different sex, I would say we have a problem. So, if Ramaphosa was purposefully trying to offend the US administration in his State of the Nation speech, he certainly succeeded by rabbiting on about equity and human rights in Mzansi. Conservatives see it as a sham to distract people from progressive social engineering and the enrichment of the elite. The US administration will not be fooled.
International relations have always been guided by the idea that nations act in their own best interests. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the US was left as the only world power, and liberals proudly proclaimed the ‘end of history’: liberal democracy was triumphant and would soon spread throughout the world. With that came the idea under Bush and Blair that Western international relations would, from then on, be based on morality from a global perspective.
So we had the Iraqi invasion which was supposed to establish a thriving liberal democracy in Iraq (the naivety is mind-boggling). Gone was the idea that a government should act in terms of what was best for its citizens. Instead there was to be a global perspective of what was best for the world. The World Economic Forum is the best example of this, with Klaus Schwab as the leading proponent. This coincidentally allowed progressive governments like the ANC to play on residual Western guilt regarding colonialism, and intimidate any opposition to progressive policies.
Trade was a major component of this globalisation which was embraced by the liberal elite. Through globalised free trade we would reach our world nirvana. Through free trade China would develop into a liberal democracy and a responsible member of the world order (again, the naivety is mind-boggling). It was not coincidental that this view also made the elite even wealthier, while economically devastating huge parts of the industrial world and increasing discrepancies of wealth within countries.
Its best interests
This is now over. The US will now act in its best interests. For Trump, that is the interests of the American people, and we should note that it is in the US’s best interests to oppose progressive policies throughout the world.
We need to be clear. Trump believes that God saved him from assassination so that he could reform the United States. I suspect that his messianic mission extends to reforming the entire world order. Trump’s repeated slogan is ‘never give up.’ Trump is the most important world leader, take him seriously and fasten your seat belt.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/53067465959]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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