Victor Kgomoeswana asks: Who in their right minds would build physical barriers in the era of virtual online commerce, which does not recognise political boundaries?
I woke up from a very scary dream in which I was delivering a sermon to a receptive congregation. I was on a platform with some Americans in what seemed like a church, preaching about how the rapture might be upon us.
Some in my audience were weeping in disbelief and horror at the results of their presidential elections. Others were media commentators, analysts and respected scenario planners. People who are trusted to sum up trends about life; that is, the economy, politics, climate change and sports.
They were entranced by my analysis about how their president-elect was not fit to be the leader of the world's most powerful nation - that he could not be trusted with the nuclear codes.
I moved them to tears, pointing out that his plan for his first 100 days in office was littered with regressive policy priorities.
They applauded when I explained how it would not be sensible to reverse the 22-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with Mexico and Canada, because the future lay in regional economic integration, not isolation.
I hinted that even the UK was no longer so sure about their decision to leave the EU, in what was called Brexit.
What with the Mexican Wall, I asked? Who in their right minds would build physical barriers in the era of virtual online commerce, which does not recognise political boundaries?
I hinted that their president-elect was likely to be left with egg on his face when he finds out how much of his own property empire was built by Mexicans and Puerto Ricans who have probably been in the country for ages - legally or illegally.
In fact, I quipped, America was built by immigrants and slaves.
It was not by accident that many refugees had settled in America, becoming Secretary of State (Henry Kissinger) or movie stars-cum-politicians (Arnold Schwarzenegger).
I laughed to scorn, and they joined in, how a country led by a son of a Kenyan immigrant, using a Kenyan solution to report election fraud incidents, would be so illogical as to now target Africans for deportation.
I won their hearts with my argument that declaring China a currency manipulator would be foolhardy, since multilateral economic diplomacy meant building relations with the world's largest market, and not antagonising it.
Some voices of dissent emerged at the back. They suggested that perhaps the unexpected outcome of the presidential election was not out of synch with the way the world was headed.
These voices were arguing that Uber, AirBnB and M-Pesa were but examples of small technology companies disrupting the taxi, hotel accommodation and banking industries respectively - much like Donald Trump.
However, these voices were aggressively hushed while trying to make my audience understand that perhaps the shocking results at the polls could and should have been anticipated, had everyone understood that the people of the world had been losing their faith in politicians and corporate-ocracy.
These voices were not given space to elaborate on how the information revolution had opened the lid on the one thing that had kept the ruling elite in power: manipulation of information. Now that social media has made everyone a broadcaster, publisher and propaganda machine, it is possible for the most unlikely underdog to take on the mighty establishment and win, despite their imperfections. In fact, these very imperfections, they contended, could have made the underdog the lesser devil to the downtrodden masses.
Not that the latter found the imperfections to be moral or virtuous, but then who of the ruling elite is?
After silencing these dissenting voices and bundling them out of the auditorium, they asked how I could understand their problems when I was not a prominent media commentator.
They wanted to know how I could manage, as an unknown quantity in US media circles, to keep them spellbound, simplifying the affairs of their political landscape.
“Which city and state are you from?” they enquired. “Johannesburg, Gauteng,” I answered.
“In South Africa?” “Yes.”
“Oh, shut up!”
The room was suddenly empty, and I woke up.
* Kgomoeswana is author of Africa is Open for Business and hosts Power Hour from Monday to Thursday on Power FM. He is also a weekly columnist for African Independent - Twitter Handle: @VictorAfrica
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent