Ramaphosa gets braaied and fed to Maga at Boerewors Summit

Cringe diplomacy reigns as timid South African delegation stumbles into Trump's made-for-TV unreality show. By Richard Poplak

- Richard Poplak

There is a genre of comedy, probably as old as laughter itself, that asks the audience to baste in the sauce of the protagonist's humiliation.

Not being a classicist, I have no idea if this kind of thing appeared in, say, Euripides; not being an Africanist, I have no notion of its prevalence in pre-contact Bantu poetry. I seem to remember some of it in Shakespeare, but don't quote me.

It is certainly a feature of British sitcoms. Think Basil Fawlty, John Cleese's splenetic hotelier from the Fawlty Towers series, who bumbled himself into excruciating social mishaps. Or Ricky Gervais's The Office, where David Brent snivelled his way into disastrous interactions with his colleagues at a dead-end paper factory. Cringe comedy is now a staple on television and in the movies.

It's also a staple of international diplomacy. Consider the unfolding of the much-anticipated Boerewors Summit betwixt President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald J Trump, which unfolded in and around the Oval Office on Wednesday, 21 May. There sat Ramaphosa as Trump played a video montage of Julius Malema's greatest hits, wearing a face that suggested “recently embalmed”. It was an ass-clenchingly difficult experience.

But welcome to the era of cringe geopolitics. And remember, if it's free to watch, you're the product.

"The thing about braais, though, is you never know how they're going to end. Once the sausage hits the flames and the third Klippies and Coke is poured, it's game on"

Braai (front) pack

Give Ramaphosa this much: he knows how to pacify cranky white supremacists. Remember when he talked a whole bunch of trigger-happy (yet, sadly, broke) apartheid people off a ledge? Neither do I. But we're constantly reminded of it by Ramaphosa's apologists, who insist that he is to negotiation what Kim Kardashian is to lip filler.