President Cyril Ramaphosa had the upper hand in the Oval office meeting, but US President Donal Trump does not have the emotional intelligence to recognise this.
“Love your enemy, turn the other cheek.” Many of us have been brought up with these Christian adages. Many who are not Christian, are generally aware of them. Indeed, it is said that if you are able to not succumb to violence even in the face of violent oppression, somehow you are the better person.
Militant Argentinian-Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara may not be an obvious example, but he said, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”
India’s Mahatma Gandhi built an entire liberation movement of daring the oppressor to be openly evil and not reacting. The United States’ Martin Luther King Jnr was famously moved by Gandhi’s non-violent philosophy of satyagraha, and made it a central plank of his civil rights movement. Even Malcolm X, who embraced violence but after he returned from a holy pilgrimage to Mecca where he witnessed black and white Muslims, he started to walk back from his message of anger towards white people.
American revolutionary socialist and one of the leaders of the Black Panthers, Fred Hampton, was militant and advocated for the oppressed and working class to be armed. He drew no distinction between black and white working class people. He organised and called for unity of the working class so that they are able to take on the bosses and elites of American society.
And this is the conundrum. We can be starry-eyed, turning the other cheek and loving our neighbour as the height of radical struggle, in the hope that the oppressor’s morality kicks in and they see the error of their ways? Nothing in the history of humankind reveals such a Damascus moment and conversion. At the same time we cannot discount that liberation struggles, which placed the military pillar at the centre, generally get consumed by their own violence.
As Brian May from supergroup Queen sang, “Too much love will kill you, it will kill you every time”, we could also add, that too much hate will also do the same.
Today, we are witnessing the weaponising of white fears by their leaders in countries around the world. These leaders, like the US’s Donald Trump, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orban have successfully convinced themselves that white oppression because of past mistakes (which are deliberately downplayed) is the greatest challenge, not that the majority of the world’s poor and oppressed are black.
We are yet to witness a reaction to this growing weaponising of white fear. Already there is a growing terrorising of black activism, and it has not yet resulted in a rising of black anger, but it could be just a matter of time.
The post-apartheid government of South Africa was an exercise in restraint when it came to getting the beneficiaries of apartheid to pay for the sins of the past.
South Africa’s liberation struggle, as led in the main by the ANC, famously did not place its military struggle at the centre, compared to contemporaries such as the Irish and Palestinian liberation movements. Its military wing was under civilian and political control, and its activities were by and large restricted to urban and rural guerrilla missions, not armed insurrection. It focused on liberating South Africa, not just for black people, who were the targets of colonial dispossession and systematic oppression, but for all people, even those who benefited from apartheid. It is that ethos that primarily influenced how it constructed the South African Constitution and the laws, policies and programmes, including those that promoted transformation.
The problem with a turn the other cheek philosophy is when there is no cathartic moment. A moment where white people in general admit that apartheid and racism was wrong and not just an expedient instrument they used because of fear. Where they admit they either turned a blind eye to the violence meted out to thousands of black people on a daily basis or they were the perpetrators of the violence. In South Africa there have been newsworthy moments such as when former apartheid government minister Adriaan Vlok washed the feet of the ANC’s Frank Chikane in public. But Vlok did it when he represented nobody. It was not popular white leaders like Tony Leon or Helen Zille who offered to wash the feet of black people to say sorry.
It was the opposite.
The behaviour of white leaders was more that they should be thanked and appreciated for giving up power. FW de Klerk did not have the humility to say that he was embarrassed to be receiving the Nobel peace prize for agreeing to dismantle an obviously wrong system.
Any reminder of their oppressive past is viewed as an attack. Hence, instead of dealing with the sins of the past, there is a false narrative of the victimhood of white people. The cathartic moment is not one where ownership is taken for being oppressive. On the contrary ownership is taken that they will not apologise for being superior to others.
In the light of this, how does one then advocate for turning the other cheek? How do you even contemplate turning the other cheek when it can mean you risk losing your dignity?
On 21 May 2025 in the White House’s Oval Office, with the world’s media looking on, South Africa gave a lesson to the world that it is possible to turn the other cheek no matter how belligerent, sneaky, cunning and intransigent the other person is. The US president tried to ambush South Africa, in particular President Cyril Ramaphosa, by playing a video of militancy and anger in South Africa. His ambushing only succeeded in him being witness to something he wishes he has.
The only natural ally of Ramaphosa present who spoke in his defence was the Congress of South African Trade Union’s Zingiswa Losi. The rest who rose and spoke in defence of South Africa and Ramaphosa were those who politically opposed him.
Trump had insisted that golfers Ernie Els, who exposed himself as a probable apartheid supporter, and Retief Goosen, attend the meeting. It was those two who began the defence of the South African government and pooh-poohing that there is a white genocide. Even the leader of the second largest party and the historical class enemy of the ANC, the Democratic Alliance’s John Steenhuisen, was at pains to explain that the ANC and his party are working together so that there is no rising support for this misplaced anger and militancy.
For me, though, it was Johan Rupert, the face of Afrikaner capital and who for many epitomises those who refuse to accept that it was not their magnanimity that brought down apartheid but a noble struggle, that really showed that Ramaphosa and the ANC’s starry-eyed turning the other cheek can actually work.
Rupert said a lot. He said that as much as Trump may be angered by the video of militancy and anger, he, Rupert, is the object of that anger more than anyone else. He told Trump that he does not lock his door at night when he sleeps. He openly and simply stated that there are too many deaths in South Africa, “but it is across the board not only white farmers”.
He cleverly reminded Trump, the property mogul, what New York was like in the 1970s, where it resembled a war zone and how they overcame that. He showed his commitment to South Africa was not just words; he is building three houses for his grandchildren on a farm near Graaff Reinet, the implication being that if he believed for a moment that white people faced imminent danger of being, why would he place his grandchildren in harms’ way. Of course his advocacy for Elon Musk’s Starlink will require more discussion.
Rupert was unafraid, like many poor black people, to highlight the problem of illegal immigrants and their involvement in crime. Moreover, he reminded Steenhuisen that his political party is in charge in Cape Town and the Cape Flats is the murder capital of South Africa.
Rupert showed why leaders like Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and now Ramaphosa always engage with him. It is not just because of his money, it’s because you do not detect any bitterness in him, and there is a deep-founded commitment to South Africa, not just white South Africa, but this diverse and real South Africa.
I doubt that Trump has the emotional intelligence to understand the moment. There was no chance that he went to bed envious that Ramaphosa and South Africa had what he yearns for — that despite a history of enmity, South Africans are willing to give each other a chance. What he would not give for any of the opposition Democrat and business leaders stepping up to the podium and defending him and his administration. I will not hold my breath.
The Oval Office scene can become as valueless as Vlok washing Chikane’s feet if we do not harness the constructive energy of Rupert into a real economic recovery programme that visibly lifts black people out of poverty. Otherwise the disappointment that black people feel in South Africa will result in their own cathartic moment and they openly and unapologetically own their anger and act it out as well.
Donovan E Williams is a social commentator. @TheSherpaZA on X (formerly Twitter).