Trump is Handing Africa to the Chinese for the Sake of Social Media Clout
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is now the second world leader that Trump has openly admonished in a White House press briefing (Volodymyr Zelensky being the first). Trump was asked by a journalist, “What will it take for you to be convinced that there’s no white genocide in South Africa?” And in response, he played a pre-planned video showing supposed evidence for the genocide, which Ramaphosa, like a schoolboy in detention, was made to sit through.
The South African leader’s dressing down was of course met with rapturous applause from Trump’s supporters on social media. ‘Finally, a president who talks tough! Why don’t we do all diplomacy like this?’
Well, there’s a reason, actually. Diplomacy is meant to be about advancing your country’s interests—not about winning clout on social media. And it’s clear that Trump’s performance did nothing but harm US interests. Trump’s supporters may have seen a tough guy telling it like it is. What Africans saw was an arrogant Westerner talking down to a black man.
To begin with, the claim that there’s a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa is preposterous. Yes, South Africa is an extremely violent place—but the violence is overwhelmingly black-on-black. Countries experiencing a genocide invariably see sharp falls in life expectancy. South Africa has seen no such fall. And according to the most recent study I could find, life expectancy among non-blacks is about ten years higher than among blacks.
This is not to say there isn’t discrimination against whites in South Africa. Nor is it to excuse the blatant anti-white rhetoric of Julius Malema, leader of the ‘Economic Freedom Fighters’. But there is no basis for the charge of genocide.
If there actually was a white genocide in South Africa, dressing down the country’s leader at a White House press briefing would hardly be the way to handle it. Rather, economic sanctions or military intervention would be called for.
The most likely effect of Trump’s performance, as Nosmot Gbadamosi argues, is to make Africans less inclined to deal with Westerners and more likely to do business with the Chinese. ‘So what?’ you might say. Well, Africa has a rapidly growing population and a lot of natural resources—including rare earths, fossil fuels and precious metals. So even if its overall economy is small, having influence there still matters.
Trump’s own goal in the meeting with Ramaphosa is part of a broader pattern of unforced errors. Since being re-elected, he has managed to shift global opinion in favour of America’s main geopolitical rival. As the map above shows, 80% of countries—including much of Europe—now view China more favourably.
The single biggest factor is probably the Trump tariffs, which have just been struck down by the courts and therefore served only to antagonise otherwise-friendly nations. Ongoing US support for Israel may help to explain the particularly dismal view of America in the Muslim world. And talk of annexing Greenland and Canada has undoubtedly soured opinion among traditional allies.
Diplomacy is never easy—though one could start by not alienating an entire continent for no material benefit.
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But what about the indigenous population? The bushmen?
You mean the ones the Bantu nearly wiped out? Shhhhh…. doesn’t fit the narrative, like the 10 000 to 20 000 Matabele the “liberal” West’s favourite Mugabe had slaughtered once black rule was established. Hurrah!
And here in today’s Daily Express is a good example of what the Ethnic Africans are still getting up to in South Africa:
Cruel mother sentenced to life for selling child to witch doctor for ‘eyes and skin’
“Saldanha, where chilling testimony revealed that young Joshlin Smith was sold to a traditional healer for her body parts.” [because she was mixed race with pale skin and light eyes, valuable to witch doctors.
May God rest her soul, poor little one…]
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1FHDcL.img?w=525&h=351&m=6&x=244&y=129&s=142&d=142
A great article. Good to hear such common sense.
What a shameful, nauseating article trying to conceal the Genocide Against White Farmers in South Africa. Here is a photo of the Plaasmoorde Memorial to them:
And here is an article telling the truth about them in 2018: South Africa’s white farmers more likely to be killed than police | Daily Mail Online “Some of the killings are reported to have been barbaric, with farm owners tortured, raped, burned alive and slaughtered in front of their families.” “Farm attack victims are usually restrained with shoe laces, telephone wires or electric cables, according to a previous AfriForum report. “Some have had THEIR NAILS PULLED OUT, had BOILING WATER POURED OVER THEIR BODIES and been BEATEN TO DEATH with makeshift weapons.” ‘Some of the murders have been accompanied by gratuitous violence and torture that can only be explained as racial hatred,’ Australian National University international law expert Associate Professor Jolyon Ford told SBS. “In January this year, 86-year-old Piet Els and his partner Rikkie Alsemgeest were the alleged victims of a brutal attack which saw four black men storm their farm, beat them with steel pipes and burn them with an iron.” “‘There are people that are being tortured for nine hours and through the night.’ “The South African government denies white people are deliberately targeted and says farm murders are part of South Africa’s wider violent crime problem.” … Read more »
Or might it be that there is plenty of anti Trump propaganda in the media across the world and very little anti CCP propaganda
Obama and Biden hardly stopped the rise of China. In fact they helped it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzIJJ_MyzXI
Pres. Obama Didn’t Believe in the Principles and Values of America – Chief Divider | Thomas Sowell
I think Noah continues to suffer from chronic TDS. I wonder if there’s a vaccine for that?
Trump is sticking by his principals, a feat of which most leaders are incapable!
What would have been said if he’d ignored the persecution? “Trumps as bad as the Chinese for ignoring it”
Lose lose situation
China has been gaining ground in African countries for some time.Traditionally the likes of the IMF and the World Bank have limited development by imposing western doctrines on those countries including refusing financing of thermal energy production, China has moved in and builds railways, roads and power stations and more, China benefits from access to natural resources and food growth. This happened long before Trump became president.
While the West gives money for weirdo trivia and unreliable energy the Chinese deliver infrastructure investment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy13u0WOSgM&t=43s
Sowell EXPOSES How Obama DESTROYED America STEP by STEP || Thomas Sowell Today
TDS alert!
Anything Trump does must be dissected to find some aspect to declare it failure, and reflect badly on OrangeMan.
The author is poorly informed. Trump’s tariffs have not been “struck” down, the Court ruled the President had exceeded his authority in using emergency powers to impose blanket tariffs but that will be up to a Court of Appeal to decide and Trump will likely win.
Any potential black government in South Africa was subsumed by China in the days of Mao. Anyone who doesn’t know that thinks history began yesterday afternoon.
As for US interest in South Africa – does it have “interests” there? Isn’t Trump’s foreign policy mostly “laissez-faire”, highlighted in his speech in Saudi Arabia?
As painful as it may seem, and is, what did the white population of an earlier apartheid system think was going to happen once the tables were turned. It’s not so much a racial thing as say, the French revolution or tutsi and hutus etc. Its just human nature, as bad as it may seem.
“… what did the white population of an earlier apartheid system think was going to happen…”
From my discussions with white folk on my visits to RSA, they thought the same thing would happen there that happened in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and which of course is what happened/is happening in black rule RSA.
The conceited, hypocrite “liberals” of the West who thought/think all black people were like Mohammed Ali, Sidney Poitier and Martin Luther King gave them no choice but to accept black rule.
They knew what was coming.
Update for Noah on Zero Hedge. ””If anybody thinks this caught the administration by surprise, think again,” Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro told Bloomberg TV. “Nothing’s really changed.” Navarro was responding to a late Wednesday ruling by a 3-judge panel on the US Court of International Trade, who found that President Trump exceeded his authority when he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify some of the tariffs. “The big picture here is we’ve got a very strong case with IEEPA,” said Navarro. “But the court basically tells us, if we lose that, we just do some other things.” According to Navarro, US Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer will speak to the tools available, and “you’ll be hearing from him soon.” Navarro floated Section 122 tariffs, which would involve levies of up to 15% for 150 days. Wednesday’s ruling gives the administration 10 days to carry out its order, which applies to Trump’s global flat tariff, boosted rates on China and others, and his fentantyl-related tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico. It does not affect other levies imposed via other methods, such as Section 232 and 301 levies. Meanwhile, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said they aren’t pulling the trigger on any alternative options… Read more »
It seems to me that there is no point in having Executive Orders if they can all be blocked by the Kritocracy = Rule by Judges.
It is not the role of the judiciary in every country to rule over the executive and legislative branches, and over every aspect of the public’s lives. They are all guilty of “Judicial Overreach” and “Legislating from the Bench”.
If Britain wishes to do business in Africa, all it has to do is revert to the Agency Law that existed in this country until about the mid to late 1990s. We changed our Agency Law in line with OECD guidance, commonality across the EU. The problem, for British Companies, is that, certainly French and Italian, Companies circumvent that law by setting up sales organisations outside their own national jurisdiction. China, India, Russia and other countries, particularly in the Far East, have no hindrance whatsoever in using local agents and paying high rates of local commission. This all ties in with the neo-colonial idea that we can control the domestic affairs of our customers in Africa. We cannot. If we wish once more to dominate our traditional overseas markets, we must revert to doing business the way our customers wish to do business. That will require considerable deregulation and two fingers to any undemocratic anti business supranational organisations that try and get in our way. The livelihoods of our working people are at stake.
Mr Carl is speaking for the whole.continent of Africa here? (‘What Africa saw’)
Yes, he purports to, even if he has never been there.
The discussion was about a genocide of Afrikaner farmers. See https://open.substack.com/pub/wherearethenumbers/p/can-concerns-about-murders-of-white?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=yw49u for a discussion as to why it is entirely reasonable to see a genocide in South Africa.
We’ve “played nicey, nicey” with African Leaders for decades. It has cost us an absolute fortune, which largely seems to have just disappeared with very little benefit for either poor Africans or us, to show for it.
He who has paid the piper for decades does have a right to call the tune at least occasionally. And a campaign of murdering white farmers in South Africa needs to be “called out” just as it should have been in Zimbabwe ….. Africa’s former food basket which is now a basket case.
If Africans think the Chinese are going to be nicer to them, they’ve got a very nasty surprise coming in a few years.
Complete tosh, increasingly a regular state of affairs from Noah Carl’s offerings.
Ramaphosa pushed for the meeting and was given advance notice that he should expect to be challenged on his anti-white policies.
The world didn’t see, “….an arrogant Westerner talking down to a black man.” The world saw a world leader holding a racist thug to account.
This sort of story might play in university commons rooms but in the real world, truth carries more weight.
Well said!