What Musk and Trump describe is not the South Africa I know and love

I am aware of the significant role that Elon Musk and a few other white men with strong South African ties play in the US’s lurch toward authoritarianism as a white South African man who currently resides in the country. These include far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a South African-born “AI and crypto tsar” David Sacks, a US president, and Joel Pollak, a South African-American conservative political commentator currently in charge of the Breitbart News Network.

These men and I still share a lot of common ground, despite the fact that I am not a billionaire and have no influence over government policy. I also gained from the system because I was born in apartheid South Africa about the same time as Musk, Pollak, and Sacks. I eventually immigrated to the US, just like them. I attended Veldskool, or “field school,” a weeklong camp for students who were trying to indoctrinate us into Christian nationalism, the apartheid government’s whites-only political ideology, like Musk. I was a nerdy boy who was repeatedly bullied in school, just like he did. &nbsp,

I’m also very different from these men, and not just because I don’t have any direct connections to the US president or any bank deposits. I don’t support racist pseudoscience, in contrast to Musk. I question the apartheid-era policies that allowed a small minority of white South Africans to control disproportionate amounts of land and resources, in contrast to Musk and the administration these men serve. And most importantly, I’m proud of post-apartheid South Africa’s accomplishments and development.

I was employed by the country’s national broadcaster as a radio journalist in the early 1990s as the country transitioned from apartheid to democracy. On April 27, 1994, South Africans of all races and backgrounds gathered to cast their first democratic election, and I can recall the excitement and pride felt throughout the nation. My colleagues and I worked together over the course of the next few years to transform the South African Broadcasting Corporation into a true public broadcaster.

As South Africans won the fight for democracy, they faced yet another battle, this time battling the AIDS pandemic. Once more, the nation and its citizens stepped up to the challenge. Millions of South Africans organized and took to the streets to demand and, in the end, obtain antiretroviral medication. The government agreed to commit to treating patients after being repeatedly pressured. Through the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the US government also made the right decision. With $332.6 million in 2024, South Africa has been one of the largest recipients of PEPFAR aid. Numerous South African lives were saved by this assistance.

Trump has cut this funding, without a doubt with the full support of his billionaire friends, who are deeply nostalgic of apartheid’s agonizing days. Trump’s recent executive orders, which stop US aid to South Africa and provide support and refuge for “victims of unjust racial discrimination,” coincided with the AIDS treatment cuts. Ebrahim Rasool, the South African ambassador to the US, was later ordered by the Trump administration.

Trump is acting in a similar way to Musk when he refers to post-apartheid South Africa as a nation of racial discrimination. Musky has previously claimed that the government of his birth country had “racist ownership laws” and that it had failed to stop what he refers to as a “genocide” against white farmers.

The country I know and love is not what Musk and Trump describe.

I moved to the US in 2010 because my South African husband and I both accepted the opportunity to work for the Open Society Foundations in New York and support international public health activists there.

Although we felt the opportunity was too good to decline, we made the decision to relocate from South Africa to the US. Moving to the US actually meant losing a number of rights and protections we had in South Africa, including good labor protections, paid family leave, and the right to marry as a gay couple. For the next five years, same-sex marriage won’t be permitted in the US. Even though these rights are still far from being practiced in practice, South Africans of all races still have access to the right to abortion and the constitution’s right to health, education, and housing.

In December of this year, I became a US citizen. It was a difficult but pleasant experience. I had to postpone going home for the memorial until I could get my new US passport because my father, Malcolm, passed away a few days prior. He had a faith and worked as a Congregational Church minister, and he had given his body to science. A sincere Christian who was supportive and loving when I publicly acknowledged that I was gay and even when I told him I was leaving the church, he admired Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Nazi dissident, and pleaded with my siblings and I to always have the courage to stand up for our beliefs.

I don’t remember apartheid, like Musk, Thiel, Sacks, and Pollak, and I don’t want to. If I want to have the courage to fight for what my father taught me, I feel like I should speak out when Musk cynically calls efforts to end the legacy of segregation “racism” and leads the charge by cutting funding for international health and development assistance (which accounts for a small portion of the US federal budget), which, according to experts, could cause more

Because Musk and his uberwealthy South African-born or-raised friends, who are people with more money than many of us can fathom, are now directly working with the American president to take everything from those who have hardly anything, I feel compelled to speak out.

We shouldn’t be following their approach. Both historical and contemporary examples offer much better examples. Take Jennifer Davis, who spearheaded the development of positive human rights and justice connections between South Africa and the US. Or the numerous CHANGE coalition members, which are currently working together to challenge and reverse Trump’s aid cuts, led by organizations like Health GAP in the US and the Health Justice Initiative in South Africa. No matter what race, sexuality, or bank balance, the millions of people in both countries are inspired and motivated by the principles of democracy, social justice, and Ubuntu, the notion that we are all connected and accountable for one another.

Musk and his enamored friends may now possess everything, but they are only a small minority. South African and US citizens who value justice and democracy have already triumphed in the past, and I’m confident that they will do so once more.

Source: Aljazeera