Most analysts tend to focus on events like AfriForum and Solidarity lobbying for US intervention or Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ill-fated visit to Washington. However, an ugly and unprecedented confrontation in the Oval Office hammered home how a transactional approach to diplomacy, providing aid and cooperation only if the recipient pays, could impact the United States’ economic and geopolitical relations with other countries and regions under Trump. This transactional philosophy threatens to upend decades of US engagement with Africa, Europe…

The United States has long positioned itself as a global champion of human rights, democracy and economic opportunity. However, its policies and decisions concerning South Africa, particularly regarding its white minority, have often been fraught with contradictions, suspicions and unintended consequences.  From the apartheid era through the post-1994 democratic transition, Washington’s involvement in South Africa has frequently exacerbated racial tensions and economic disparities. The recent surge in H-2A visas issued to South African farm workers, who are predominantly white, and…

Donald Trump’s Executive Order (EO) on ‘Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa’ (07/02/2025) is not a new development but a continuation of racist United States policies implanted on South Africa dating back decades. America is and has remained the godfather of oppression of Africans, Indigenous People and others within its borders, and these heinous policies were exported to South Africa to strengthen subjugation and ‘apartness’. Therefore, Trump’s EO is not an anomaly but a reflection of embedded…

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he won’t attend the G20 Summit in Johannesburg this year, accusing South Africa of “doing very bad things” and “anti-Americanism”. The new US top diplomat repeated President Donald Trump’s false claim that Pretoria was confiscating private property and violating human rights, indicating deteriorating relations between South Africa and the US over various foreign and domestic policy disagreements. South Africa’s policies on China, Russia, Ukraine and Israel are at the centre of the tension.The…

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has swiftly moved to dispel claims by US President, Donald Trump that the country is seizing land from some of its citizens. Ramaphosa also reasserted his authority and rejected the Republican Party leader’s insinuation that South Africa’s Expropriation Act was an instrument to take land and punish whites, saying it was nothing more than a constitutionally mandated legal instrument to ensure a just and equitable land redistribution. Based on that claim, Trump said all funding…

One of South Africa’s leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the fight against tuberculosis (TB) and HIV has been forced to retrench part of its staff after US President Donald Trump imposed a 90-day pause on all US funding to foreign countries and organisations. The pause is among several executive orders Trump signed immediately after being sworn in as the 47th president of the US on January 20th. He stated that he wanted to assess whether these funds align with his…

The decision by the US President to temporarily halt foreign funding for 90 days pending a review is expected to leave 15,145 employees of several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in South Africa without jobs. The devastating impact of the funding freeze was revealed today, 29 January 2025, by the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, on the sidelines of the ongoing Cabinet Lekgotla in Pretoria. Motsoaledi said the affected funding is channelled through the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief…

For centuries, Europe was the architect of global imperialism, carving up foreign territories and subjugating populations in pursuit of dominance. Driven by a potent cocktail of ambition, religious zeal and racial superiority, the expansion of the European empire ranks amongst the worst human disasters, especially for the world’s subalterns. The empire was built on exploitation, enslavement and violent subjugation and birthed the dreadful, unequal and racist modern world.  Now, the tables have turned in the face of US Imperialism or…

US President-elect Donald Trump is set to ignite new trade wars with some other countries, including China. His announcement on social media on 25 November 2024 that he would impose additional tariffs on goods from China, Canada, and Mexico came as no surprise.  The Republican Party leader, elected in November last year following his victory in the US presidential election, declared he would impose an additional 10 or 25 percent tariff on imports from these countries, pushing the global economy…