President Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency has coincided with the tectonic shift reshaping world affairs. Donald Trump’s re-election and the unsurprising way he has gone about “Making America Great Again” has sent shivers down spines.
Trump conducts the affairs of state as if it were one of his businesses. Add Elon Musk to the mix and one has an explosive cocktail that threatens to upend traditional diplomatic practices and conventions, and replace them with a strictly transactional approach to world affairs.
Ramaphosa tried to deal with the Trump factor in his state of the nation address this week, saying: “But we are not daunted. We will not be deterred. We will not be bullied.”
The truth is that while the US may need South Africa, we need the US just as much — if not more. We must accept that the four years of Trump that lie ahead are not going to be easy. No South African government is going to bow and scrape to the Americans, and it may even be too much to hope that Washington will give us a fair hearing. We’ll need to box especially smart in the years ahead, upholding what we regard as our principles, but understanding we do so in circumstances beyond our control.
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