By Simon Ngena
LESS 90 days after his election as the United States’ 45th President, Donald Trump has proved too hot to handle for friend and for alike. Even before the ink was dry on his Oath of Office, the controversial billionaire was already causing jitters across the globe with his ‘gunboat diplomacy’. First was neighbouring Canada, which he wanted to annex (or is it conquer?). Next on his radar was the Panama Canal, which he said belonged to the United States and not Panama.
Across the Atlantic Ocean he caused more shockwaves by presenting Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a hastily cobbled ceasefire deal over which the latter had no say. To rub salt into Zelenskyy’s wounds, Trump went on to call his erstwhile ally ‘a dictator’. And when NATO embraced Zelenskyy, Trump gave his European allies the middle finger while threatening to dump the organisation.
Back home, the maverick Trump pulled the plug on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after he sanctioned a 90-day halt on foreign aid, a decision that affected all financial support distributed by the aid agency. The decision has had a profound impact and generated widespread alarm worldwide, none more so than in Africa.
In 2023, USAID had allocated a total of US$12 billion to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with the objective of ‘improving’ healthcare, delivering food assistance, and ‘promoting security’.
South Africa
But the worst was yet to come with the Trump administration’s decision to expel the South African ambassador, its latest move against a country it has singled out for sanctions and accused of being anti-white and anti-American.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was “no longer welcome in our great country” and said he was “a race-baiting politician” who hates America and Trump.
Trump had already issued an executive order earlier cutting all funding to South Africa over some of its domestic and foreign policies. The order criticised the ANC-led South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting ‘bad actors’ in the world like HAMAS and Iran.
A white minority group in South Africa has been a central focus for Trump.
Trump falsely accused the South African government of a rights violation against white Afrikaner farmers by seizing their land through a new expropriation law. No land has been seized and the South African government has pushed back, saying US criticism is driven by misinformation.
The Trump administration’s references to the Afrikaner people — who are descendants of Dutch and other European settlers — have also elevated previous claims made by Trump’s South African-born advisor Elon Musk and some conservative US commentators that the South African government is allowing attacks on white farmers in what amounts to a genocide.
That has been disputed by experts in South Africa, who say there is no evidence of whites being targeted, although farmers of all races are victims of violent home invasions in a country that suffers from a very high crime rate.
The issue of land in South Africa is highly emotive given that more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule, whites still own most of the good commercial farming land despite making up just 7 percent of the population. The South African government says the expropriation law aims to address those historic inequalities but is not “a confiscation tool” and will target unused land.
Trump has offered Afrikaner farmers refugee status in the US and a fast track to citizenship, but groups representing them say they want to stay in South Africa.
Trump’s sanctioning of South Africa also cited the country’s case at the United Nations’ top court accusing US ally Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
During arguments in that ongoing and highly controversial case, Israel accused South Africa of acting as a proxy for HAMAS. Trump has repeated that, questioning South Africa’s motives and accusing it of an anti-American foreign policy that supports Hamas, Iran, China and Russia.
South Africa’s post-apartheid government has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause, going back to the time of Nelson Mandela, its first black president. It compares the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the experiences of black South Africans who were confined to certain areas during apartheid.
Rasool, the South African ambassador, comes from a Muslim community in South Africa that has been a center of support for Palestinians. The Breitbart writer whose story was cited by Rubio — senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak — was also born in South Africa and is Jewish. His story cast Rasool as a Hamas supporter.
Pollak has other connections to the US-South Africa situation after recently meeting with a lobby group representing Afrikaners. South African media have reported that Pollak is a contender to be Trump’s pick for US ambassador to South Africa.
The US criticism of South Africa has extended to its presidency this year of the Group of 20, a bloc of major economies that aims to bring the developed and developing world together. Rubio skipped a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in South Africa last month and said he would boycott the G20 summit in South Africa in November.
He said he had a problem with South Africa’s theme for its G20 presidency, which is “solidarity, equality and sustainability.” Rubio, in a post on X, dismissed that as “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and climate change” and said he would not waste taxpayer money on it.
Trump’s sanctioning of South Africa also cited the country’s case at the United Nations’ top court accusing US ally Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
During arguments in that ongoing and highly controversial case, Israel accused South Africa of acting as a proxy for Hamas. Trump has repeated that, questioning South Africa’s motives and accusing it of an anti-American foreign policy that supports Hamas, Iran, China and Russia.
South Africa’s post-apartheid government has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause, going back to the time of Nelson Mandela, its first Black president. It compares the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the experiences of Black South Africans who were confined to certain areas during apartheid.
The US criticism of South Africa has extended to its presidency this year of the Group of 20, a bloc of major economies that aims to bring the developed and developing world together. Rubio skipped a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in South Africa last month and said he would boycott the G20 summit in South Africa in November.
He said he had a problem with South Africa’s theme for its G20 presidency, which is “solidarity, equality and sustainability.” Rubio, in a post on X, dismissed that as “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and climate change” and said he would not waste taxpayer money on it.
The South African government has expressed surprise at Trump’s sanctions and says it wants to fix its relationship with the US. “South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship,” said a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (pictured) in response to Rasool’s expulsion.
But US-South Africa ties were strained even before Trump. The Biden administration accused South Africa of supporting Russia in the war in Ukraine while claiming a neutral stance. Like with the Palestinians, South Africa has historic ties to Russia, which supported the fight against apartheid.
While Ramaphosa has repeatedly said he wants to engage in talks with the Trump administration, the ANC has at times been defiant. The ANC recently invited the Iranian ambassador to its headquarters in Johannesburg and said it wouldn’t hide its friends.
South Sudan
Earlier this month, the US revoked visas for all South Sudanese passport holders, following the country’s refusal to accept the return of its citizens who were deported from the US. This move also includes blocking South Sudanese citizens from entering the US at ports of entry, intensifying the diplomatic standoff between the two nations.
The decision came amid increasing concerns over South Sudan’s political stability in the face of the threat of renewed civil conflict. Following a flare-up of violence in March, the US withdrew non-essential personnel from its embassy in Juba, heightening fears that the fragile peace agreement signed in 2018 could collapse. South Sudanese nationals in the US, many of whom were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) due to the ongoing conflict, now face uncertainty as their status nears expiration in May.
This latest development follows a broader trend of the Trump administration’s strict stance on immigration and deportations. The US has previously clashed with other countries over the return of deported migrants, most notably in the case of Colombia in January. With tensions escalating, the impact of the visa revocation on individuals such as Khaman Maluach, a promising Duke University basketball player from South Sudan, remains unclear, as his university closely monitors the situation.
Lesotho
Trump moved a gear up in his tariff war against the rest of the world, imposing a steep 50 percent tariff — the highest among nations —on Lesotho.
The move deals a harsh blow to the ‘mountain kingdom’, which Trump mocked as a place ‘nobody has heard of’.
The measure delivers a severe blow to Lesotho’s economy, which relies heavily on exports for its modest US$2 billion Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Trump’s new tariffs were calculated based on the US trade deficit with each country, divided by the total value of imports from that nation. As a result, smaller economies with limited imports from the US – such as Lesotho and Madagascar – were hit hardest.
Lesotho’s trade surplus with the US is largely driven by diamond and textile exports, including Levi’s jeans. In 2024, its exports to the US totalled US$237 million, accounting for more than 10 percent of its GDP, according to Oxford Economics.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration claims Lesotho imposes a 99 percent tariff on US goods.
The high levies on Lesotho and other African states signalled the end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade deal that was supposed to help African economies develop through preferential access to US markets, trade experts said.
It also compounded the pain after Trump’s administration dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was a major aid provider to the continent.
Thabo Qhesi, a Maseru-based independent economic analyst, said the US tariff on Lesotho “is going to kill the [country’s] textile and apparel sector”, its largest private employer.
“If the closure of factories were to happen, the industry is going to die and there will be multiplier effects,” Qhesi said. “So Lesotho will be dead, so to say.”
No wonder, political observers likened Trump’s actions as akin to using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
While Lesotho might be, in Trump’s eyes, a ‘poor country’ with little to offer to the US, this is not the case with the DRC. Congo is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, a mineral used to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and smartphones. It also has substantial gold, diamond and copper reserves.
DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, whose country is fighting Rwandan-backed rebels who call themselves M23, said last month that he was open to a deal on developing critical minerals with Washington if the American involvement could help quell insurgencies and boost security in the African country.
A Trump administration official was quoted recently as saying the US was in talks with conflict-plagued Congo on developing its mineral resources under a deal the Congolese president has said could help make his country safer.
US. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, Massad Boulos, did not provide details of the potential deal following talks with Tshisekedi, but said it could involve ‘multibillion-dollar investments’.
“You have heard about a minerals agreement. We have reviewed” the Congo’s proposal, Boulos said. “I am pleased to announce that the president and I have agreed on a path forward for its development.”
American companies would be “operating transparently” and would “stimulate local economies,” Boulos said.
The Trump administration also is negotiating with Ukraine over a minerals deal in that country, which originally was proposed by Zelenskyy in hopes of strengthening his country’s hand in its conflict with Russia by tying US interests to Ukraine’s future.
Eastern Congo has been in conflict for decades with more than 100 armed groups, most of which are vying for territory in the mineral-rich region near the border with Rwanda. The M23 is the most potent of the rebel groups engaged in a long-running war with successive DRC governments. In a major escalation since January, the rebels have captured the cities of Goma and Bukavu and several towns in eastern Congo, prompting fears of regional war.
Meanwhile, M23 has withdrawn from Walikale, a key mining town in eastern Congo it captured last month, after weeks of fighting with Congolese forces and its allied Wazalendo militia.
The Walikale area is home to the largest tin deposits in Congo and to several significant gold mines. The Bisie tin mine, around 60km northwest of the town, accounts for the majority of tin exports from North Kivu province.
The 45th president of the US must be salivating at the prospect of amassing this mineral wealth at the expense of fellow superpowers China and Russia, never mind former coloniser, Belgium. Hence the carrot of peace, Trump is dangling in Tshisekedi’s face. But peace at what price?
And lest we forget, the atomic bomb which literally ended Japan’s role in the Second World War was made from uranium mined in the DRC.
