Racist, regressive Trump fears SA's commitment to equality

In the face of a growing global black majority, the US president hopes to shore up what is left of white privilege, choosing autocratic supremacy. South Africa's post-apartheid policy framework on race defies this

- Victoria J Collis-Buthelezi

US President Donald Trump rode to victory to make America great again, if his claim is to be believed. Making America great again is to return the US to its past “glory”, before the 1960s Civil Rights legislation set equality for all, and before blacks, women, gays, black and brown immigrants, and all these Others, could claim the right to the American dream.

Before the 1960s, there was a clear agreement between white capital, the white bourgeoisie and white labour. This was not only in the US, but globally.

Thus, stepping off his aeroplane on 7 February, Trump said that “terrible things are happening in South Africa”.

As is now well documented, he was referring to the Expropriation Act and this country’s redistribution policies aimed at ending racial inequality.

Now Trump has issued an executive order “addressing the egregious actions of the Republic of South Africa”. The order cut off US aid to South Africa and offered to resettle Afrikaners as refugees in the US.

Polarised debates

Today, deeply polarised debates continue to rage in South Africa about how we speak of race and inequality.

Some argue that the very utterance of race frays South Africa's social fabric. Many contend that inequality is a class question, such that the mostly black political elite have betrayed the masses. Others press for the explicit labelling of inequality in South Africa as racial.

What is often forgotten in this discourse is that equality is part of the founding myth of South Africa after 1994. Apartheid was an extension of the global racialised colonial order put in place at the end of the 15th century. Post-apartheid South Africa’s recognition of racialised inequality as a malady and equality as its goal is what is really at issue for the Trump administration.

If successful, post-apartheid South Africa’s approach to land and inequality will contribute to the end of the colonial racial order.