LAEL BETHLEHEM: Making apartheid great again?

How should we understand current events in the US? Without doubt, the recent changes represent a sea change in American and global affairs. The question is what is at the root of these changes and how they will play out. 

Writing in the Financial Times, Edward Luce argues that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are driven primarily by blatant commercial interests — their own and those of their circle. They have moved quickly to dismantle laws and regulations that constrain profitmaking in almost every way. They have removed laws prohibiting bribery and gutted anti money-laundering legislation. They are repealing environmental protections and cutting taxes on the rich.

They are insisting on payment in exchange for military and diplomatic support. They are promoting cryptocurrencies and supporting various private entities in which they and their circle have direct personal interests. Their economic policy seems to be to grab resources by whatever means they can, and to take from the poor to give the rich. As Luce argues so eloquently, “Trump has subverted the role of the public servant. The US state now serves him.” 

These dynamics are familiar to us in SA. What Trump is doing is beginning to look like state capture. Grab the state under the cover of ideology, under the pretext of serving those who have been left behind by market economies. And then use the state not to serve those people, but for the benefit of a few.

But the events of the past few weeks also remind us — in a different way — of another chapter of SA history, the story of the apartheid state. Trump’s attacks on diversity and inclusion are nothing more than a thin veil placed over the ugly faces of racism and misogyny. This is evident in the gutting of the Kennedy Center, the attack on black leaders in the military and other institutions. That Nazi salute. A great interest in the rights of white Afrikaner South Africans, and a refusal to recognise the necessity for redress. This sounds more like Make Apartheid Great Again.    

Aside from racism, the entire style of the Trump administration is reminiscent of the apartheid state, and of fascist regimes in general. It is marked by an obsession with domination. It is characterised by attacks on the vulnerable. It is brutal in its disregard for anyone who is sick or weak. It is contemptuous of the poor. It rejects the independence of institutions and the separation of powers. It subverts everything to the will of the ruler. These ideas — and the bullying that accompanies them — are reminiscent of PW Botha and Magnus Malan. The current American leadership seems to be slipping into SA’s past.

What lessons emerge from the SA experience? The first is that injustice and brutality should never be defended. Not in the name of self-interest and not in the name of ideology. We should remember that the majority of people who benefited from apartheid supported it, and devised a range of ideas to justify it in their own minds, and the minds of their allies. Many people in America seem to be doing the same.

The second is that domination and brutality can triumph in the short term, but these victories do not last. Trump’s approach to the economy will lead to short-term profits but long-term crisis. A year or two of inflated egos and inflated stock markets will eventually lead to inflated prices and a deflated mood. The bubble will burst. This will not be a happy scenario for Americans or anyone else in the global economy.

Change will come in time, though at a great cost. As the great SA poet Mongane Wally Serote wrote in 1973: “It is a dry white season, but seasons come to pass”.

• Bethlehem is an economic development specialist and partner at Genesis Analytics. She has worked in the forestry, renewable energy, housing and property sectors as well as in local and national government.