'Trump’s actions taking us back to primitive days of slavery, colonisation'

FRANK Chikane, a veteran of the African National Congress (ANC), argues that the arbitrary actions of United States President Donald Trump, including the cutting of financial support to South Africa, are based on mistruths and raise global safety concerns.

It was reported on Sunday that a high-powered South African delegation will embark on a diplomatic mission to the United States, with stops in China, France, Germany, and other countries, to mend strained relations and avoid "humiliation" in Washington.

The team, whose members will be named by President Cyril Ramaphosa, will travel to key global capitals to rally support and build alliances before heading to the US.

South Africa is in the midst of a diplomatic crisis sparked by Trump, who has cut all aid to the country because of accusations of land confiscations aimed at white Afrikaners. Some analysts suggest Trump’s actions were sparked by South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

On Sunday, Chikane told broadcaster Newzroom Afrika that Trump’s actions are a backward step.

“It is a different world we are living in. In the normal world of international relations – a regulated form of relationships – you cannot have arbitrary action. You cannot have a country making a decision based on wrong information, a superpower for that matter, with all the intelligence in the world would have an order by the president based on falsehoods,” said Chikane.

“I think that makes this world dangerous to live in. That is why I am saying we have gone back to the imperial period, going back to the times of slavery where you take slaves, put them in ships and take them to the Americas without any rights, it is a period of colonialism where Europe could do anything they like in the world.

"They had their own democracies, and constitutions but because they were racist in their thinking, they did not think the colonized have got the rights themselves. The Trump event tells me we are going back to the primitive years where power determines what happens rather than reality,” he said.

Earlier this month, it was reported that US President Donald Trump has made good on his promise to cut funding to South Africa over the government’s land expropriation policy and resettle white farmers whose land will allegedly be expropriated.

In a late-night Executive Order on Friday, Trump accused South Africa’s government of “egregious actions” without providing any evidence, saying the recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 would seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.

Trump said this Act followed “countless government policies” designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fuelling disproportionate violence against “racially disfavoured landowners”.

In addition, he also accused South Africa of having taken aggressive positions towards the US and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide against Palestinians in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.

“The United States cannot support the government of South Africa’s commission of rights violations in its country or its undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation, our allies, our African partners, and our interests,” read the Order.