"I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America."
~ Robert F. Kennedy
When I was younger and studying South Africa on my own (back during the days when apartheid had not yet entered the annals of history), I was rather struck by what felt to me clear similarities between South Africa and the United States. It sometimes felt to me like I must be making some of this up, because nobody else (especially Americans) seemed keen on such comparisons. Then, I ran into this quote (see above) by Bobby Kennedy, and this confirmed my suspicions.
Yes, there are indeed some real similarities between the two countries. As Kennedy suggested, both were settled by the Dutch, taken over by the British, are incredibly rich with natural resources and graced with breathtaking natural beauty. Both countries also enjoy the benefits (and I might add, suffer the excesses) of modern technology. And of course, both nations have a long and well-established history and enduring legacy of racial tensions and staggering inequality.
Back during my childhood and through my teenaged years, South Africa was enduring through the struggle against apartheid. At the time, it seemed like the most natural comparison was the civil rights struggle here in the United States about a quarter of a century earlier, even though there were obviously some significant differences. But the United States - particularly the Dixiecrat states in the South of the United States, which practiced both legal and socially enforced Jim Crow racial segregation - there were some obvious similarities. Racial segregation was evident with separate bathroom facilities, separate entrance to public buildings, and segregated buses and trains and restaurants and parks and water fountains and all of that, much like what existed in South Africa. Obviously, neighborhoods were strictly segregated, and interracial marriages were strictly forbidden by law. So while comparisons might not have been comfortable for many Americans, nevertheless they seemed to me obvious, and even inevitable, frankly.
For that matter, American foreign policy towards the white minority regime in Pretoria during the days of apartheid South Africa also felt loaded with racial tensions. It could be an uncomfortable conversation to have at the time. For example, the unforgiving approach to South Africa practiced by the administration of Jimmy Carter gave way to the so-called "constructive engagement" policy of Ronald Reagan, who opposed economic sanctions, to the point where Pretoria felt that they had a friend in Reagan's White House. This likely should have been viewed with more skepticism by most Americans, especially given the recent racial tensions in recent American history at the time. In retrospect, now that we know that Ronald Reagan may have held what we would consider some pretty racist views (as was documented with his phone conversation with Richard Nixon), we can only wonder if there was not some racist viewpoints which were secretly guiding friendly American foreign policy towards South Africa at the time.
My father seemed to draw such comparisons. He accused both countries of dragging their feet when it came to meaningful change. He pointed out how South Africa and the United States were the only two advanced countries at the time which did not have some form of what we today would call universal, affordable healthcare. It was hard not to see that there were still comparisons to be made even then, decades after Robert F. Kennedy gave his famous "Ripple" speech in South Africa.
So it was difficult to not make comparisons between the two nations. Different as they might be - and there are of course some serious and impressive differences between the two - nevertheless it still feels like there are more similarities than differences. That includes the fact that both are large nations, that both are bordered to the east and west by oceans, that both have rugged mountains, deserts, and huge grasslands (called plains in the United States, called veld in South Africa). Both obviously had major frictions with racial tensions throughout their history, from the early colonial period right through to the present day. Both had strict system of racial segregation that transcended just social norms, and went into state sanctioned, legally enforced systems of segregation. It was Jim Crow in the United States, particularly in the so-called Dixiecrat states, while it was apartheid in South Africa. Both had very wealthy neighborhoods which enjoyed probably the highest standard of living in the entire world (certain neighborhoods of southern California in the United States, the northern suburbs of Johannesburg in South Africa). There were organized struggles against both the racial and economic caste systems in the two countries, and while there were serious differences, there were also some striking similarities, as well.
When I was growing up, it felt like the United States had the more obvious progress in terms of resolving their racial problems. After all, official Jim Crow racial segregation had been outlawed during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. Things like segregated buses and water fountains and bathrooms and restaurants and parks and such had been made illegal a long time ago, more than a decade before I was born. Meanwhile, it seemed at times like apartheid was somehow strengthening in South Africa at times. However, things changed. Eventually, to their credit, the Afrikaners lent their support to the National Party's reforms, led by F.W. DeKlerk. By 1990, apartheid had not officially been abolished, but it was clearly on the way out. The last vestiges of apartheid really ended with the multiracial elections of 1994, and the taking of power by a majority rule government shortly thereafter. The worst, it seemed, had been averted. Suddenly, far from being a pariah nation, or the world's skunk, as Nelson Mandela had referred to his country in his inaugural address, it felt like now, South Africa had become the "rainbow nation." A model for the world to follow, which reinforced the promise that largely nonviolent solutions can be had to fix centuries old tensions and divisions in a country.
Or so it had seemed to me at the time. But little by little, horror stories about reverse discrimination, about racist policies in southern Africa suddenly began to be the new stories. Some of them were not exaggerations, as in Zimbabwe, where the government made what proved to be a disastrous decision to take farms away from white owners, which devastated the economy. Zimbabwe, in fact, which had once seemed to serve as a promising model for reform that South Africa might model, now had turned into the new pariah state of southern Africa. It had disintegrated into an impoverished and backwards dictatorship. The economy collapsed, the currency became completely worthless, and economic sanctions placed on Zimbabwe by the world community felt eerily reminiscent of what South Africa had faced not long before during the days of white minority apartheid rule.
Then, there were whispers that the same thing was beginning to happen in South Africa. That whites were losing their farms, that the economy was suffering. There were even those who at least claimed that white farmers were being massacred in large numbers in the country, even though this was not reported by the mainstream media. Some of these stories were being reported on by extreme rightwing media sources, such as Qanon.
Meanwhile, things had begun to reverse themselves in the United States. While many Americans were too busy congratulating themselves on the "post-racial" society that they now felt the United States had become during the Obama years, they seemed oblivious to a growing threat. I remember two older white males told me (separately, they do not know each other, to my knowledge) that you could no longer call the United States a racist country, now that we had elected a black president. Yet, there were some cartoons critical of Obama which portrayed him and his wife as monkeys or gorillas, which seemed to be a criticism quite different than focusing on mere opposing opinions or policy differences. Some Americans were suggesting that the United States, under Obama, was becoming a third world country. There was the whole "birther" movement, questioning if Obama had not been born in Kenya, or if he was not a "secret Muslim." President Obama was criticized for wearing a tan suit, although some of his predecessors, including Reagan, had also worn tan suits without raising any eyebrows. Again, these were criticisms which were very different, and seemed at least in part to be fueled by rising racial tensions. Add to this the police shootings of unarmed blacks triggering the "Black Lives Matter" movement, and the backlash against that, as well as the racial riots that suddenly dominated headlines, and gone were any claims that the United States had achieved some sort of "postracial" democracy or utopia.
Then along came the political rise of Trump, who stunned the world and won the White House. The reality that the first black president would be succeeded by a many who was endorsed by David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan, and numerous white supremacist groups, and suddenly problems with overt racism was a thing again in this country. It felt like a resurgence of bitterly hostile and outright racist viewpoints, which were being aired out in the open again for the first time in many decades. Just months into Trump's presidency, there was a rally in a city in Virginia of outright neo-Nazis displaying the flag of Nazi Germany and shouting "Jews will not replace us!" And Trump seemed to have a surprisingly difficult time condemning the neo-Nazis and blatant white supremacists. His campaign had gained early notoriety (and apparently, loyal support) for referring to Mexicans within the United States as criminals and rapists, and had also championed a ban on immigration from Islamic countries. Before long, he also referred to dozens of countries in Latin America and Africa as "shithole nations," and wondered why we could not get more immigrants from countries like Norway. In the bid for re-election in 2020, the Trump campaign briefly posted a video of one of their supporters yelling out "White Power!" before taking it down a few hours later.
Clearly, racism in the United States was not a thing of the past.
Meanwhile, South Africa had it's own problems, of course. Yes, there was black majority rule there now, but problems persisted with increased crime, including violent crime. The AIDS epidemic was particularly pronounced in South Africa. There was also serious economic inequality, and a lot of this went along...yes, racial lines.
No, the problems with racism were not over in South Africa. And there are still some blatantly racist people in South Africa, for that matter. There are a couple of "whites only" (perhaps we should be more specific and refer to them as "Afrikaner only" communities, most famously Orania. Yet this was not unique to South Africa, as we saw some efforts to create the same here. One attempt for a "whites only" town in North Dakota was exposed and defeated. But they tried again in a county in Tennessee. And while there is an uproar, and many are standing against them, the battle has not yet been won against them, to my knowledge.
Indeed, the two countries still remind me of one another. Not surprisingly, there are people who seem to be involved, in one way or the other, with both. In many respects, the ones with the highest public profiles are billionaires with roots living under privileged circumstances as young white South Africans during apartheid, who are championing the "white nationalist" cause here in the United States, helping them to gain a public platform on social media, and to rejuvenate the cause of blatant racists. It sure feels like hate mongers are feeling a second wind with the political rise of Trump.
To be specific, there are four high-profile billionaires who had their roots as whites living privileged lives in South Africa during the days of apartheid who now have become prominent supporters of, and funders for, the Trump campaign. Of course, we all know the most famous of them, Elon Musk. But there are others, as well. Here is a bit of a summary of them in a recent article by Simon Kuper (see the link below):
Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Donald Trump and a troll of Ukraine, left aged five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent years of childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime’s clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists as the originator of the QAnon conspiracy, which helped shape Trump’s Maga movement. (Furber denies being “Q”.)
Musk, of course, yes. But Sacks, Thiel, and Furber? Four prominent billionaires with roots growing up in apartheid South Africa, and who now seemed to be prominent supporters and enablers of the Trump campaign?
At some point, it becomes difficult to keep dismissing these things are mere coincidences and not see an obvious pattern here.
The question is, will Americans actually pay attention to this? Do most recognize it, or if they do, do they care? Or perhaps the most alarming question: are many Americans not only comfortable, but actually secretly supportive of these former white South African billionaires?
What exactly is their agenda? Are they trying to recreate an apartheid state here in the United States for the 21st century?
Back in the 1980's, I remember wondering why more Americans did not question what the Reagan administration's foreign policy towards apartheid South Africa of "constructive engagement" actually meant. Did it not betray a certain measure of lingering racism among the upper echelons on government in a country which itself had, not very long ago, also seen racial segregationist laws in place for much of the country? Why was it that Americans seemed to dismiss this, often without entertaining any kind of plausibility, just quickly trying to move on to another topic? this included many black supporters of Reagan, who never seemed critical of anything that he did.
Yet decades later, we find evidence that Reagan held pretty blatantly racist views, as revealed particularly in a recorded phone conversation between himself and President Richard Nixon. Can we now acknowledge what felt to me then obvious: that the possibility of racist attitudes may have played a part in American foreign policy towards apartheid South Africa? Is this not something which we at least now, decades later, might want to explore, given the pretty obvious rise of hate crimes and the return of blatantly, out in the open racist attitudes and sentiments among a surprisingly significant proportion of Americans?
At the time, very few people really seemed willing to have that conversation. One of the relatively few Americans I can think of who did question it is Jello Biafra, the punk frontman of the Dead Kennedys. But it should have been more than just a punk musician known for some shock value who seemed to have pieced this together at the time. We should have been a bit more critical at the time.
Of course, history does tend to repeat. And now, decades after apartheid officially ended in South Africa, we once again have an opportunity to confront these issues, and the questions that they pretty much demand us to ask. When we have specifically privileged white South Africa billionaires not just identifying but providing serious funding for the Trump campaign, and apparently feeling quite emboldened by his victory, should we not finally ask if this does not betray how certain racial attitudes seem to be accepted in the United States today? Should we not finally ask why so many Americans seemed to tolerate the attitudes of intolerance back in the 1950's and 1960's during the Civil Rights movement, or during the days of "constructive engagement" foreign policy towards apartheid South Africa during the 1980's, or now, when there appears to be a link between those who benefitted the most as privileged whites during the days of apartheid South Africa, and their current enthusiastic support of Trump and the MAGA movement, once and for all?
Below is the link to the article by Simon Kuper which I used in writing this blog entry, and from which I quoted in the summary of the four billionaire South Africans and their support for Trump and MAGA:
Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid South Africa by Simon Kuper, September 19 2024:
The parallels between South Africa then and the US today are striking
Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid South Africa
https://www.ft.com/content/cfbfa1e8-d8f8-42b9-b74c-dae6cc6185a0
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