South Africa has its very own MAGA movement

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

– Walter Lippmann

This is a follow-up to the blog I posted on Friday, Trump and Musk worship on steroids in South Africa.

I have been following the online comments made by South Africans from a series of newspaper articles posted on Facebook since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. The comments generally reference the deluge of absurdly racist and bigoted Executive Orders made by Trump since then.

One of Trump’s Executive Orders, in particular, seems to have energised and emboldened even the closet racists to vent their outrage in public. Last week, Trump declared that foreign aid to the country would be halted. This brash measure, characteristic of Trump’s narcissistic demeanour, was based on the misinformation circuitously fed to him by Afriforum, a South African organization focused on racial self-interest.

The fabrication that reached Trump’s ears was a combination of lies about White farmers being murdered at a genocidal rate and land being expropriated without compensation from an imaginary group of victims. The White Genocide lie has, of course, been in circulation since Trump’s shameful first term of office. The lies about land expropriation surfaced following a large-scale misunderstanding of proposed new legislation in South Africa.

The threatened discontinuation of the aid package will affect South Africa’s PEPFAR anti-retroviral programme, which provides services that help pregnant women give birth to HIV-free babies, among others. America contributes only around 17% to this programme, while the South African government funds the balance of this multi-billion-dollar programme.

Support for Trump (and Musk) from the White minority in South Africa is alarmingly significant. It’s almost like these people have been in hibernation for just over thirty years, and Trump’s return to office to lead the charge for bigotry to become mainstream has woken them up. Worse, it has woken the bitterness and resentment many people still feel after apartheid was consigned to the rubbish heap (or so we thought) in 1994.

There is no mistaking the latent anger and thinly disguised racism. The yearning for a return to the glory days of apartheid racism is palpable. I’ve come to the conclusion that South Africa has its very own Make Apartheid Great Again (MAGA) movement.

My interaction with some of those who post these biased comments has uncovered the same individuals who defended Israel’s apartheid policies, the dispossession, displacement, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, continuous land expropriation in the West Bank, and even the genocide in Gaza, now hypocritically hyperventilating about imaginary land grabs and genocide of White farmers in South Africa.

How very fucking expedient to grow a conscience after (being duped into) believing that an imaginary injustice is happening or about to happen to them?

While I admit I haven’t covered myself in glory in my personal comments in response to my expression of horror at the insensitivity in the comments, this is just one example of a “conversation” I had last week with a typical South African MAGA.

Aside from the childish laugh emojis, Quintin is heartless and lacks awareness and compassion. More disturbing, however, is that he is very much emboldened by the resurgence of Trumpism to predict that a new era of racism and bigotry is about to unfold.

However, it’s also fair to point out that there are many other White South Africans who don’t share these racist tendencies and are active in counteracting them. These people are naturally cherished.

Disconcertingly, this pattern of bold arrogance and shedding of the facade will no doubt develop further in South Africa as Trump characteristically lurches from one act of indignity and bigotry to another in his second term of office.