Terence Corrigan: We all need to be speaking out against SA’s self-harm

Key topics.Trump's comments shifted focus from EWC to him, aiding pro-EWC narratives.The Expropriation Act threatens broader property rights, not just land.US-South Africa relations are strained, with Trump using hardball tactics..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..The seventh BizNews Conference, BNC#7, is to be held in Hermanus from March 11 to 13, 2025. The 2025 BizNews Conference is designed to provide an excellent opportunity for members of the BizNews community to interact directly with the keynote speakers, old (and new) friends from previous BNC events – and to interact with members of the BizNews team. Register for BNC#7 here..If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Terence Corrigan*."Terrence he is an extremely dangerous world leader. You need to speak out about that," read the note on Facebook messenger. This was on the morning of 15 April 2020. Donald Trump, faced with the COVID pandemic and then approaching what would be the end of his first presidential term, had announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the World Health Organisation. My acquaintance had some links to the WHO and took this badly..So, I must admit, did I. Not Trump's decision as much as the demand. Firstly, he misspelt my name (ONE R, please!!!), and then, well, required me to "speak out". I found the imperiousness here breathtaking, although since this person had obsessed about Trump for years, I wasn't surprised. I was, however, bemused by what he expected me to do. Write an irate Facebook post? An angry letter to the editor? .Even more of a mystery is what he hoped I could achieve. I would be surprised if anyone in the United States even noticed an intervention from me, let alone anyone with even the most minor influence. Like my interlocutor, I am a resident of the rapidly declining city of Johannesburg in the hugely challenged Republic of South Africa. The US is, to appropriate without compensation something Forrest Gump once said, "this whole other country". .As it happens, the resurrection of the spectre of EWC has re-centred Trump – now the President of that "whole other country" for a second time – with a vengeance..With a law marked by a deeply problematic definition of expropriation and prescribing a process skewed in favour of the state to the detriment of those under its authority, EWC is back in focus. Our esteemed president has chosen to sign this into law without favouring his nominal coalition partners (or the country) with a heads-up that this was coming. But this being South Africa, he was probably banking on our seemingly infinite capacity to endure abuse and disdain from the state for his actions to be overlooked. One might even conclude – gasp! – that he was doing this to demonstrate who was really in charge, and who didn't really matter. Not taking that cooperation thing terribly seriously..Read more: A legal analysis of EWC's controversial 'nil compensation' clause.In the event, there was no shortage of voices willing to endorse the law as a positive good – just the business for resolving historical injustices – or to shrug and shuffle along with a "nothing to see here". .For myself, I like to think I've learned some lessons from watching South Africa's capacity for self-harm, so I was less sanguine. I am, as noted, a resident of a declining city in a hugely challenged republic, and it's not the US. .Nevertheless, it was Trump's intervention via social media and in an impromptu press conference on an airport runway that turbocharged the matter. All manner of government, political and journalistic interests girded themselves up to do battle on their keyboards and smartphones. .I've said it before and I'll say it again: for millions of South Africans, the US is a place in the heart rather than a place on the map. With the pervasiveness of the US in the modern media and cultural landscape, any of us live in a virtual reality which closely resembles that country. There was, I think, an element of validation for many of us to be noticed in our small, decaying corner of the world by such a supposed villain as Donald Trump. This was a rare opportunity to confront him head-on rather than whistling in the wind about whether he was being nice enough to a cleric we'd previously never heard of, or handling wildfires in California with sufficient aplomb – these being matters about which we understand (at some level) that our views are utterly irrelevant. .The chorus was swift and loud, combining denunciations of Trump (and to some extent of the US as well, since there's a big envy thing among some of us, and an ideological hatred among others) with an energetic defence of the Act. And Trump is super-right-wing. So there! .I'm less than thrilled about Trump's remarks, myself. The Expropriation Act is an extraordinarily pernicious piece of legislation, and the EWC agenda – the drive to seize property, of which land is only one element – remains very much alive. There is a whole raft of plans in the works, including more aggressive BEE and the National Health Insurance where this Act might prove useful. Or rather deleterious. .Trump has, I'm afraid, given the pro-EWC lobby a valuable gift. With the heady moral fervour that comes with denouncing him – because, you know, he's super bad – the substance of the policy issue confronting South Africa has largely dissipated in the public mind. Trump, in other words, became the story around EWC. Nothing captured this better than the title of a webinar on the Act put on by the Daily Maverick: "What Trump Missed". The "need to speak out" has been a powerful one..And Trump did not help himself – or those of us who have a real, present-tense concern about EWC – by making factually incorrect remarks that South Africa was "confiscating land". This has not in fact happened, at least not in the sense of state seizures, though the kernel of the risk is that they could and that the Act enables them. For years, that has been the sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit message coming from the ANC and the state, from President Ramaphosa down. There have also been murmurings that properties had been targeted for expropriation either at no compensation or vastly below value, so I think we've skated closer to actual seizures than is commonly acknowledged. Still, facts matter, and Trump didn't have this one lined up properly. .EWC and the future of property rights are matters of profound, even existential importance to the country. This is not even just about land. The Expropriation Act is about property, and down the line I doubt that the covetous gaze of the state as it exists (not the benign Scandinavia-on-the-veld that some commentators seem to assume it to be) will remain focused on the "land question". Pension funds, for example, might become more tempting targets. I can't help thinking that some of those eminently progressive suburbanites posting "Debunk" memes on their Facebook and X feeds might one day regret trading caution about their government for the momentary satisfaction of "speaking out". .In this sense, I ruefully conclude that "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is a real thing..In any event, this does as much for US policy and Trump himself right now as my "speaking out" on the US's WHO membership would have done back in 2020. I doubt he knows or cares – I've scanned the American media, and my impression is that, well, this whole thing means infinitely more to us than it does to them. It's been barely touched; we're just not the story we think we are. And on our side, this amounts to pure performative moral preening. But if that makes you happy, by all means, go ahead. Perhaps there's a catharsis in this, to pretend to be involved in the real world-historical stuff while our immediate environment collapses about us….Ironically, I think that the stampede to condemnation also does a disservice to South Africa's understanding of – and therefore ability to interact with – the US under Trump..Trump doesn't care about South Africa, I've heard. So what? How many South Africans care about Mozambique or the DRC, beyond annoyance that some of their people have moved in here? And the occasional pogrom aimed at those unfortunate neighbours who don't quite belong? But the state of Cabo Delgado or North Kivu is not an issue for most of us, even if we have had soldiers fighting and dying in those countries. So don't get huffy about Trump's lack of attentiveness to our needs. Whether or not he cares is immaterial, and we shouldn't expect him to..Though, equally, don't assume that Trump is being nasty just because he feels like it. He has objectives, even if they're not always clearly thought out (what was that about concepts of a plan?). Bottom line, though, is that he wants something. Looking at his thinking in Art of the Deal, it seems that his plan is to come on aggressively – pugilistic and mercurial is how I've put it – to signal that he's not a soft touch, and he's ready for a fight. As he put it: "The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you're dead.".Having staked out a position, the idea is then to negotiate with the odds in his favour. The key here is that he's looking for leverage. With one of the most powerful economies and state systems in human history behind him, this is, ahem, considerable..The trick then is to figure out just what he wants. I think that too many observers project their own sense of pathology onto him. I doubt that he's especially interested in placating white supremacists; the constriction of property protections, however, would be a matter of concern for American investors in South Africa, and would have some more abstract costs in that it would signal a growing drift by South Africa away from market capitalism..Read more: EWC's gestation – the facts behind the 'nil compensation' panic.Equally, South Africa has positioned itself as an opponent, if not an enemy of the US, for at least two decades. Relations have been fraying for some time – that's whether or not our suburban meme-warriors want to argue that it is really all about Trump, and Trump only (Obama was the man!) – and the blowback was inevitable. As it happens, it came from Trump in the form it did..I see that Joel Pollack, Breitbart's in-house counsel, who is close to the Trump movement (and someone born, though not raised, in South Africa), has been mentioned as a possible ambassador to South Africa. He's said that for South Africa to enjoy the economic benefits of a close relationship with the US, it needs to abandon race-based policy, align with the US geopolitically and abandon its case against Israel. Trump would, he said, "play hardball"..While each of these would be positions that the US government (and not only Trump or his administration) would like to see adopted, I suspect they are a maximalist basket of positions. I doubt that there is any realistic expectation that South Africa would reorient itself to the extent that Pollack's comments imply. And maybe without significant concessions, the US is willing to cut South Africa loose, and to treat it as the hostile power the ANC has claimed it to be. (That's an analysis, not a recommendation.) It will take considerable skill to try and bridge that gap, and I doubt whether that exists within our shopworn diplomatic corps. Conscious choices all round have consequences that are difficult to avoid..Still, I hope there is some scope for negotiation on all this, however ill-prepared South Africa may be to engage in it. And that South Africa is willing to negotiate and engage. But a state primed for ideological obsession in its geopolitical outlook does not inspire confidence..Trump is South Africa's (and the world's) reality. But he is not the only one. South Africa confronts a raft of failures that have nothing to do with him, and has made choices that promise a difficult future in its relations with the US well beyond Trump. More significantly, they promise hardship for South Africa irrespective of the incumbent in the White House. .It would be nice if those so concerned with the conduct of the US president were here to hold our own to that standard. To quote my acquaintance, "you need to speak out about that.".Read also:.Corrigan on EWC: For a good law, get the facts right firstViv Vermaak: EWC – Don't panic! (But if you have to, do it like this)Rushed EWC Bill is 'political suicide' – IRR.*Terence Corrigan is the Project Manager at the Institute, where he specialises in work on property rights, as well as land and mining policy. .This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission

Terence Corrigan: We all need to be speaking out against SA’s self-harm

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