The Whites-Only President and South Africa

I spent the year 2000 as a Visiting Professor in South Africa. I worked with the framers of their new multi-racial democratic Constitution. Hope was in the air with the end of apartheid. But horror was in the recent past. Now President Donald Trump has brought a reminder of the horror.

Other than Nazi Germany, perhaps the 20th Century’s most racist nation was South Africa with its system of apartheid. Though the country was less than 10% white and approximately 80% Black (including the intermediate category of "colored" the government used), whites removed any political power from Blacks, brutalized and beat Black people, took land and minerals, and limited where Black people could live to unfavorable Shantytowns. The global community of nations (except the U.S.), however, joined with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and helped institute South Africa’s multi-racial democracy.

But now President Trump has ignored this history and is helping white South Africans only. Apartheid 2.0. Specifically, while illegally deporting and otherwise removing numerous migrants of color in the U.S. and making non-European immigration difficult, he sent American officials to South Africa to help Afrikaners leave the country and come to the U.S. Trump’s stated reason is that Black people are supposedly terrorizing mainly Afrikaner farmers, and a new law will make this worse.

Actually, whites still own and successfully operate most South African farms, and the number of land invasions is small. Indeed originally, years ago, Dutch Boer colonial farmers stole the land from Blacks. But Trump fears Black people, as do many South African whites. Trump’s actions are reminders. European monarchies sliced up the African continent without regard for tribal linkages or rivalries, creating political chaos, war, and poverty.

President Reagan did his part for the U.S. by declaring Mandela’s liberating African National Congress to be a terrorist organization. Instead, Mandela was a Nobel Prize winner.

So what will happen if these whites move here? There may be a surprise. Many white South Africans who move abroad then return. But the grass is always greener. Other Afrikaners may fantasize enjoying lives in the U.S. a bit like that of South African-born Elon Musk. By contrast, Nelson Mandela sought a diverse society.

Meanwhile, if Trump succeeds in his colonial plans, he may be unhappily surprised at the results. Canada's population is slightly less white than the population of the U.S., while Greenland’s population is almost 90 percent indigenous.