The Last Refuge
Trump's executive order against South Africa lacks substance but will ignite a rhetorical war. I hope I am proven wrong about how some of us - especially white South Africans - will respond.
I was stepping out of the subway in Brooklyn on Friday night, February 7, when I got a notification on my phone that President Donald Trump had signed an executive order “sanctioning” South Africa, halting all aid to the country.
The New York Times reported that the order cites South Africa’s recent land expropriation law, which Trump claims unfairly targets white South Africans, especially Afrikaners. The order also elevates Afrikaners to the position of “refugees” that Cubans who oppose their government enjoy here. As one white South African friend quipped on WhatsApp: “Deporting actual refugees for the white supremacist conspiracy theory refugees.” The executive order also made clear that South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice was a major justification for the aid embargo.
Of course, there is no truth to the claims Trump makes. As the Times reminds its readers, despite making up only 7% of the population, white South Africans still control (read own) vastly disproportionate amounts of land—a legacy of apartheid.
While executive orders often have varying levels of impact, they can significantly influence public opinion and take up time and energy. It is hoped that the South African government will not rise to the provocation, as it has largely refrained from reacting to such pressure recently. President Cyril Ramaphosa has, to date, stood firm.
Most Americans and their public representatives and media wouldn’t be able to locate South Africa on a map. In any case, they’ve moved onto bigger targets closer to home: trans people, artists, Mexico, and Canada, and then Russia, China, and Palestinians. What was certain, however, was that it would spark a rhetorical war inside South Africa.
I wondered whether for self-identified Afrikaners and whites in general, as well as their political representatives, social movements, media outlets, political parties—such as the DA (Democratic Alliance), Afriforum, and Solidariteit–and the media that uncritically report or amplify their claims, would join most of their black compatriots, to stand firm and reject Trump’s actions as political blackmail. Would they be patriotic, and see it as an opportunity to join and build a popular consensus for a just, equitable society? Perhaps the beginnings of a national movement, transcending politics, urging bolder state action to radically deracialize our society, implement actual land reform, and unite for fundamental change.
Instead, Afrikaner political organizations have used their time and platforms to try to leverage the executive order to secure concessions from the government they don’t deserve. They fail to recognize that sacrifices are necessary at some point—just as Black people have had to make since the end of apartheid. Afriforum and Solidariteit, the two most visible rightwing Afrikaner groups who for years now have been petitioning Trump, white lawmakers, and media in the US, suddenly announced that they wanted to stay in South Africa, but demanded a meeting with the government for a new “cultural accord” because they, more than anyone else—meaning Black people, the actual victims of South African history—need special treatment.
The South African political scientist Steven Friedman has an explanation. He argues that the prejudice expressed by figures like Trump and Musk and their South African supporters is more deeply rooted than we’re told. While they can’t openly claim racial or gender superiority anymore, they position white men as victims of unfair restrictions. They falsely present concerns about fairness, claiming white people are persecuted when all that has happened is that white men lost legislative power over others. Their rhetoric, suggesting that non-white, non-male leaders are unqualified, masks their true agenda: preserving the dominance of white men. For Friedman, this view, shared by many—both extreme and moderate—slows progress toward racial and gender equality, as it perpetuates the belief that some people are inherently better or more deserving than others.
These ideas are widespread in mainstream white South Africa. Despite the slow pace of land reform or the fact that there is no evidence of “white genocide,” white South Africans still feel persecuted.
Leaders of the DA have largely aligned themselves with Trump and Musk in the last few days. For example, John Steenhuisen, the leader of the DA, agreed with the US government's “concerns” in an interview on Radio 702 (a popular, national talk radio). Cilliers Brink, the party’s leader in Tshwane and one of the party’s rising stars, also repeated false claims similar to those made by Trump and Musk. The DA has a history of calling for US interference in South African politics: remember when they appointed lobbyists in Washington DC to project themselves as a government-in-waiting or when the DA later called for the US to interfere in South Africa’s 2024 general elections?
On the eve of the 2024 US election, Helen Zille, the most powerful politician in the DA, told an audience at Yale University debating the legacy of 30 years of South African democracy, that on the eve of South Africa’s own 1994 election, she realized the ANC, then led by Nelson Mandela, needed to be resisted and was racist. Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s first black finance minister, and advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, part of South Africa’s legal council at the International Court of Justice, shared the stage with her. Some present told me Manuel and Ngcukaitobi were clearly embarrassed by her outbursts and lack of history.
But Trump and Musk’s sentiments are not limited to the DA or Afrikaners. There is a tendency to say Afriforum, Gareth Cliff, or The Kiffness – the latter are two white, reactionary social media personalities – are the bad apples. But Peter Bruce, who used to edit the Business Day and still has a column there, may think he is different from these people but had a piece up last week headlined: “Musk living proof BEE bars SA growth.”
Meanwhile, News24, the country’s biggest private media outlet, has turned op-eds from sources like Breitbart into news articles, giving these claims more legitimacy. In the latest instance, they amplified a Breitbart post written by Joel Pollak, Tony Leon’s former speechwriter who is close to MAGA (for more on him, I’d recommend Max Bluemnthal's journalism; just google it). The headline on News24 read, “The world is tired of SA’s focus on redressing the past, says rumored Trump ambassador pick.” Pollak is clearly looking for attention. It’s worth noting that he is hardly Trump’s pick. The “story” was reported by Carol Paton, known more for her labor journalism. What Paton failed to mention to her readers is that Pollak’s entire political identity revolves around addressing the harms done to Jews by the Holocaust and antisemitism to redress the past. This is offensive to Black South Africans. (A few days later I saw radio host John Maytham, usually a first-class detector of grifting, riffing off the Pollak article.)
At the time, News24 also sent out a newsletter soliciting more subscribers saying they opposed misinformation but didn't explicitly tell its readers what the misinformation around land reform was.
It’s incredibly dishonest how many white people in South Africa are acting as if AfriForum is the only group resisting any form of transformation. These same individuals support the “New” South Africa as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them, cause discomfort, or require them to pay for apartheid. According to this view, all of South Africa's problems are due to corruption and mismanagement by a black-led government over the past 30 years. Apartheid is denied, and if it is acknowledged, they claim that no one benefited from it, particularly white South Africans. They argue that apartheid was simply about attitudes, and those attitudes have disappeared with no lasting generational effects. They’ll oppose Trump and Musk on “misinformation” but ask them about issues such as land reform and watch them squirm.
This mindset is embedded in the DA, in the tone of coverage from major news media platforms, among white Olympic swimmers, and in countless suburban neighborhood watch groups. For these people, South Africa is only acceptable if it serves their interests, and if the Springboks win. This is the misuse and craven manipulation of “non-racialism” in South Africa that Trump’s goading is exposing.
I hope I am proven wrong.