Stand with SA against Trump’s wrath

To allow South Africa to be isolated and punished would be to surrender to the imperial logic that seeks to divide and conquer all who resist

- Yanis Varoufakis

When the powerful punish the principled, we glimpse the unmasked face of empire. Donald Trump's vindictive executive order denying aid to South Africa punishment for its support of Palestine and pursuit of land reform offers precisely such a moment of clarity.

The contours of our new global struggle are now etched with brutal exactitude: a struggle between those who bow to imperial diktat and those who defy it.

On the questions of Palestine and its right to undertake land reform, South Africa stands on the right side of this divide, and it must not stand alone.

South Africa's so-called "crimes" are acts of courage. First, its steadfast support for Palestine's struggle against Israel's genocidal war machine. Second, its determination to redress the inequalities wrought by colonialism and apartheid through land reform.

Both are acts of resistance against the imperial order that demands the Global South remain subservient, impoverished and pliant.

The parallels with Greece's humiliation at the hands of the Troika are impossible to ignore. When I served as finance minister in 2015, our democratically elected government was brutally disciplined for daring to challenge austerity orthodoxy. The message was clear: democracy ends where creditor power begins. South Africa now faces a similar lesson sovereignty ends where solidarity with Palestine begins.

But let us not mistake this for mere coincidence. What happened to Greece was not an aberration; it was a calculated demonstration of power. The European left, with a few honourable exceptions, stood by as our economy was strangled and our people impoverished.

Southern European governments, cowed by the threat of similar treatment, offered little more than sympathetic murmurs. Greece was made an example of, a warning to others who might dare to challenge the neoliberal consensus.