JOHANNESBURG - David took on Goliath at the White House, in what was, for South Africans, a highly anticipated showdown of biblical proportions.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was the proverbial David and President Donald Trump, Goliath.
READ: SA delegation remains calm in 'genocide ambush' by Trump
Famously, Goliath is a large figure that was always expected to wipe the floor with the much smaller David, a lowly shepherd, only to be taken out by a careful and sophisticated use of the sling and a single stone.
Is this what we witnessed in the Trump-Ramaphosa meeting on Wednesday?
Looking back, there is quite a lot that came out of that meeting. We have now come to expect an ambush from the US President, and we’re sadly starting to become desensitised to this type of behaviour.
However, there are a few questions that stand out, mainly about the delegation that was present in the briefing, put together by President Ramaphosa himself. Pro-golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, industrialist Johan Rupert, are among the recognisable civilian names in support of the politicians accompanying Ramaphosa.
GNU partners, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen and Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau, were also joined by COSATU President Zingiswa Losi.
Is this group the sling and stone that Ramaphosa needed?
The SA-US relationship has been strained for some time now, with Trump claiming the South African government is doing very bad things to white Afrikaner farmers, including unsubstantiated claims of ‘genocide’.
On his return to the White House, Trump has cut HIV/AIDS funding, offered Afrikaners refugee status, and even threatened to slap some of South Africa’s politicians with sanctions.
READ: US expects more Afrikaner 'refugees' to arrive in the next months
Wednesday’s high stakes meeting was a culmination of these tensions, and the stage was set out in something akin to a battleground. The Oval office was rife with the tension you might experience in a war setting, that had many a South African on the edge of their seats.
Was Ramaphosa our David? Was the delegation the tools he needed or merely tools given to him? Could he wield the tools he had for a better future?
One must commend the South African President for calm composure, and resilience under what must have been a nerve wrecking and tumultuous occasion. Ramaphosa is not just a president, but he is the president of a nation of majority black Africans, who just 31 years ago (and not 35 years) fought and gained their freedom, against the same group now readily accepting prancing around leveraging whatever agenda Trump has through his baseless and unfounded claims.
“Mandela taught us” was a line that rolled off Ramaphosa’s tongue, and he managed to make it clear to Trump that South Africa strongly believes in its global moral position and will not back away from issues of moral infractions in the global community. South Africa is, on these matters, an authoritative voice, and South Africa is here to stay.
From there, things seem to go quite sideways, and where we hoped to see David wield his sling and stone, we instead had a cinematic experience of a South Africa that seemed quite alien to its citizens. This, we now know was amateurish creativity designed to amplify the Trump genocidal tune and have the world dance at his feet, much like the jovial and uniquely South Africa dancing of Malema’s chant of the historically (and constitutionally) justified struggle song.
Rather than vehemently defend the right to our history and the sovereign liberty of our courts to decide whether such matters constitute hate speech or any other such bad things as Trump seems to parrot, Ramaphosa and Steenhuisen proceeded to unscrupulously detach themselves from Malema.
The EFF leader has in his own right contributed tremendously to the South African political arena, however one chooses to judge that contribution.
So, it is right to draw inspiration from Mandela, but not from the struggle movement that gave us the very same Mandela, and still fuels and drives many of our vehicles of self-expression and self-determination?
Perhaps this is because we are a violent nation, and the wisdom of Mandela is necessary to tame and guide us away from our own violent tendencies. Is this what South Africans, the US and the world must understand from the utterances of COSATU president Zingiswa Losi.
READ: Staying in SA | Farmers refute claims of white genocide in the country
Without taking away from her attempt to fabricate unity among the members of the delegation, that display of diplomacy is in poor contrast to the defamation of South Africa’s public image, calling the country a violent nation.
To say we understand her sentiments in attempting to clearly indicate that the issue, is not about some hallucinated genocide, but rather an issue of crime – an infamous byproduct of inequality, unemployment, and poverty; this would be far too much leniency than she has given South Africa’s government.
But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water just yet. South Africa is now perfectly poised to fight crime on a scale hitherto unseen. Elon Musk shall save us and equip all our police structures with Starlink, and then there will be no more genocides or gang wars. Johann Rupert was only missing some tattered clothing and a bowl, in what was reminiscent of Oliver Twist’s famous plea for more soup.
It is yet unclear, however, how a satellite internet network is going to help us fight crime any more than conventional internet networks. Maybe this satellite internet network is going to give us premium access to such AI tools as Grok that can tell us exactly how the white farmers are being killed en masse, and perhaps even generate some documentaries for us that capture the perpetrators, and we shall be free to arrest at will, those even in contravention of our own constitutional edicts.
“When you have nothing to say, say nothing.” This is not a directive for one to continue to utter sounds and syllables against all evidence to the contrary, but perhaps all those hours in the open air of the golf course and one learns to speak the language of the trees and the grass, whispering a purer and higher form of nothing.
No one is saying that Afrikaners and white farmers should not have a voice and express what they feel is genuinely a concern for their social group. However, they are not unique in their fears about the criminal element in South Africa. All South Africans share various fears about their livelihood and position in the country.
But it is hypocritical of them to not place the matter into the pertinent context. We are a young nation, still battling to find ourselves with the truly atrocious and violent war crimes by the Afrikaner minority of the National Party, still fresh in our collective minds.
We are not, however, a violent nation. We are a recovering nation. The delegation failed, dismally, to leave this point unambiguously clear to the global community in what was a fantastically unique opportunity.
Sadly, the sling came apart, the stone – a mere lump of sand – crumbled, and this David could not be the shepherd we really needed.
By: Smangaliso Mkhuma