Doubtless, the U.S. will survive the Trump administration. However, that survival will not be without relatively permanent scars. Last Wednesday on May 21 Donald Trump and several members of his administration hosted a talk with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and an official South African diplomatic delegation.
President Ramaphosa is a very experienced diplomat and negotiator, and he said he saw this as an opportunity to explain to the Trump team what modern South Africa was all about. The meeting ,he thought, would be good for improving trade relations with the U.S.
However, as our forefathers and foremothers would say about President Trump in this meeting, “That man acts like he wasn’t raised right. He’s got no manners. No home training.”Shortly after the meeting started, Trump ordered his staff to begin playing a video which he explained to President Ramaphosa, showing white South African gravesites indicative of the on-going massacre of white members of the South African population.
Trump admonished Ramaphosa that such actions had to stop immediately….that President Ramaphosa had to order his country to stop murdering its white citizens. Such mass murder could not and would not be tolerated.
President Ramaphosa had brought along both white and Black officials of his government, and they jointly tried to explain to Trump and his team that the video did not show what the Trumpsters thought they were seeing. In fact, they said, the pictures displayed showed gravesites of priests in a public gathering to honor them, and virtually none of the video was shot in South Africa in any case. The pictures were from The Democratic Republic of Congo DRC. Unperturbed, Trump and his minions persisted that the video said what Trump said it said, and that was why the U.S. had just given 59 White South Africans (Afrikaners) immediate entry into the U.S. with the promise of almost immediate visas to stay.
President Ramaphosa, who is also now serving as the President of the G-20 group of nations, quietly explained that the Trump team was incorrect. Mr. Ramaphosa had even brought with him several white members of his cabinet and white members of an allied opposition party in South Africa — the Democratic Alliance, whose membership is 95 percent white — and they, too, tried to correct the Trump team’s nonsensical view of a racial genocide being conducted in South Africa.
But true to the caricature of ignorant people clinging to their claims in spite of clear evidence to the contrary, the Trump folk stuck to their guns and continued trying to embarrass the South African delegation.
When Trump is no longer the POTUS, it will be very interesting how much damage his administration will have done to the U.S.’s image as a rational, reasonable entity in world affairs. America may find itself seen as a second-tier country with bombs — respected because of its armaments, but ignored because it no longer makes sense.
It is well ahead of solidifying that impression. If countries deserve the leaders they get, the U.S. is currently paying for many previous sins in world affairs.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
