WORLD IS MUCH LARGER THAN U.S.

South Africa is going through a bit of a rough patch in relations with the US. The country seems to have become Donald Trump’s favourite African punching bag. The outspoken leader has cut off foreign aid over what he alleges is the “unjust racial discrimination” of Afrikaners - White descendants of Dutch colonisers who ran the apartheid regime that denied basic rights to the Black majority until 1994.

His concerns relate to the new Land Expropriation Law, which seeks to address historical injustices regarding the distribution of land among South Africa’s White and Black communities - with the latter reportedly possessing only some 4% of privately-owned land, despite making up some 80% of the population. (White South Africans also control a disproportionate amount of the nation’s wealth: for every rand held by a typical White household, a typical Black household possesses just 5 cents, according to a 2024 article in the journal Review of Political Economy.)

Pretoria’s relations with the US were already strained under President Joe Biden. Bipartisan legislation introduced in February 2024 aimed to penalise South Africa for pursuing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. The previous year, South Africa faced a backlash from Washington for conducting naval exercises with Russia and China, as well as for allegedly supplying arms to Russia.

In this clip, former deputy South African president Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka points out that her country has the right to establish relationships with any nation it pleases, as any sovereign state is entitled to establish beneficial peer-to-peer relations.

South Africa is a founding member of the BRICS economic bloc, which is expanding and gaining influence globally at the expense of the US. Could that - along with Pretoria’s commitment to upholding Nelson Mandela’s legacy of supporting Palestine - be contributing to its troubles with imperialist forces?

Video credit: SABC News

Sources

https://time.com/6087699/south-africa-wealth-gap-unchanged-since-apartheid/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09538259.2024.2318962#d1e167

https://www.sahrc.org.za/index.php/sahrc-media/news/item/1446-10-percent-of-south-africans-own-90-percent-of-the-country-s-wealth-report

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/world/africa/south-africa-russia-us-lawmakers.html

https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099125003072240961/pdf/P1649270b73f1f0b5093fb0e644d33bc6f1.pdf

https://www.theafricareport.com/337233/us-lawmakers-warn-south-africa-over-hamas-ties/

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/new-legislation-us-congress-seeks-punish-south-africa

https://unric.org/en/south-africa-vs-israel-14-other-countries-intend-to-join-the-icj-case/

https://lse.shorthandstories.com/racial-wealth-divides-in-the-UK-and-South-Africa/