Good Advice Isn’t Imperialism

South Africa mustn’t fall into the trap that African countries have used to avoid accountability for decades. The US has a right to put conditions on our relations. We can say no. But we shouldn't...

Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

No. The United States is not violating our sovereignty by placing conditions on our bilateral relations. The USA’s demands are not some forcible act of imperialism. They are conditions on a consensual agreement that South Africa’s government can choose to follow or ignore – facing the consequences either way; there is no act of coercion involved.

The conditions that the USA has put on South Africa to mend relations are also more than reasonable; if anything, they should be considered sound advice. Couple this with the fact that South Africa benefits far more from relations with the USA than they benefit from dealing with us, and we surely should take them seriously.

We need the USA

In 2024 South Africa enjoyed a trade surplus of R36 billion with the United States, benefiting from duty-free trade agreements like AGOA. This is not to mention the advanced goods that we import from the US, enabling our industries to advance.

US companies directly employ 148,000 South Africans, and US investment and trade has created at least 426,000 jobs. The spill-over effect of the wealth these jobs produce has enabled kids to be put in school, groceries to be bought, houses to be built. The wealth created likely benefits millions of South Africans.

The US is the world superpower, the world’s most important economy. We cannot function as anything but a pathetic little rogue state without maintaining cordial relations with the US. To think otherwise is beyond foolish.

And no, BRICS will not come and save us. Our overtures to Iran, China and Russia will amount to nothing. The so-called Axis (fitting name) doesn’t look after its friends. Russia and China haven’t come to save Iran. And only North Korea, a real stellar example of humanity, has come to aid Russia in its brutal invasion of Ukraine.

But on the other hand, the US helps its allies. Even with Trump’s wishy-washy, noncommittal approach to America’s old allies, the US has still aided Israel against Iran and has done far more to maintain global stability than any member of BRICS.

By souring relations with the US, South Africa would not be choosing a dying hegemon for an alliance of plucky upstarts. We’d be dooming our economy and isolating ourselves from the prosperous world in the vain hope that a bunch of rogue states will care about more than themselves.

What are the demands?

The US’s demands are not even unreasonable. The first is that farm attacks become classified as priority crimes. The brutality of these attacks, and the fact that the government effectively ignores rural areas and leaves them unpoliced is a travesty. We shouldn’t need a foreign power to tell us how to protect our people. But sadly, we do.

Second, the US wants the ANC to unequivocally condemn the song and phrase “Kill the Boer”. The fact that our president and government allow this song to be sang non-satirically and by parties that wish to enact their rhetoric should make us all embarrassed to be South African. Ronald Gouws was prosecuted for satirising the song by pointing out double-standards, yet Julius Malema is allowed to publicly utter promises to kill entire portions of the population.

Third, expropriation without compensation (EWC) must be abolished. Private property is the bedrock of civilisation, and EWC threatens the very institution of private property. No business or citizen is safe so long as EWC remains. The US has a right to not want to deal with a country that wants to steal from its population. And we should be thanking the US for pressuring our government to eliminate this disgusting piece of legislation.

The final demand is also reasonable, but a bit selfish. The US wants all its associated entities to be exempt from Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). This is a reasonable demand, as a foreign entity should not be expected to abide by our disastrously stupid laws. But I wish that the US had pushed for BEE as a whole to be abolished. BEE is the slow death of this country, whereby the ANC enacts its racialised vengeance, while simultaneously destroying the economy and society for everyone.

Good advice isn’t imperialism

South Africa mustn’t fall into the trap that African countries have used to avoid accountability for decades. The US has a right to put conditions on our relations. We can say no. The US isn’t going to invade us if we don’t. But we should say yes.

The Structural Adjustment Programmes of the IMF and World Bank were not “neoliberal” violations of sovereignty, but conditions put on loans and foreign aid. Not a single African country implemented the programmes, yet the IMF and neoliberals are blamed for the failure of the continent. Imagine if these policies that worked to develop the free world had been implemented in many parts of Africa.

Even if the US behaved harsher, I still don’t think that it would be violating any moral or perhaps even legal codes. The US was morally correct to sanction Apartheid in 1986. In a similar fashion, the US and other countries have a responsibility to protect the people of the world from their capricious governments.

The ANC has already shown warning signs that it doesn’t care about a large portion of its population. In fact, it would be far happier if Afrikaners, white people and other minority groups just disappeared. I would like to think that if the ANC continued its racist crusade against its own population, that foreign governments would step in to help.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is a political analyst and author. He is the managing editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation.