Anti-African: In Donald Trump’s America, 32 out of Africa’s 53 countries already face a US travel ban, or a threat of one. Photo: Supplied
I’ve been neglecting my creativity column for a while, and here’s why: my attention has been hijacked by the swift decay of my other country, my original country, and if you don’t know me personally and haven’t heard my accent, let me give you a hint to which that is: the one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for some, that used to, sometimes, inspire other nations around the world to greatness.
Those days have ended rapidly, like a kiloton bomb dropped from a tall tower hitting the pavement in the middle of a city we once admired. Step by step with the frenetic speed of a cocaine polka, we have seen the remarkably intentional decline of American exceptionalism in the name of — what, exactly? Saving the nation from brown people?
My fiancée, a Shona woman, says MAGA ought really to be MAWA — Make America White Again. Trumpism is not strictly a political project, in other words, but also, or perhaps primarily, a racial one.
As evidence of this, note that the only people granted special refugee status under the Trump administration are our own group of 59 “persecuted” white farmers, some of whom are not even farmers, and none of whom have been persecuted under any realistic definition. One, Charl Kleinhaus, is the chief executive of a mining company. Many have surely made this move to get a US passport and a relocation bonus that includes furniture, housing, a pre-paid phone, and even groceries.
Yes, groceries, which is a real benefit since their prices continue to rise in blessed America, even as Trump claims they are coming down. He also said on Liberation Day that the term groceries is old-fashioned yet beautiful. But that’s another story.
Meanwhile, legions of refugees from countries previously considered a priority such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Afghanistan are now being blocked, and Latino immigrants, including some in the US for years, are being deported to countries they’re not even from.
Trump, as we know, subjected our own president to the indignity of being shown a series of clips of Julius Malema singing Shoot the Boer and other irrelevant provocations, to prove there is rampant white genocide in our republic, although in the end it will be Trump who may be humiliated when some of our friends return home, proverbial tail between legs, begging for forgiveness.
Meanwhile, this same administration has instituted travel bans against 12 countries with brown-skinned majorities, as if this will stop the acceleration of its non-white population. Seven of these 12 are in Africa. Do the maths.
An additional three dozen have now been threatened with similar bans if they don’t shape up by mid-August. There are too many in this group to conclude what they are doing wrong in common, but here’s a hint: 25 are in Africa. This means that a total of 32 of our continent’s 53 countries are either being stopped from visiting the Land of the Free, or under threat of it. Africa has only an eighth of the world’s population, yet two-thirds of the ban. Clearly, we are very bad hombres.
This affects me personally, with my Zimbabwean fiancée on the brink of being forbidden to visit me, never mind what this short-term block might mean for her long-term green card prospects.
Otherwise, no great loss, perhaps. Who would want to go to America now? Only someone who wants to experience what it’s like during the rise of a fascist dictatorship, which admittedly could be educational. I only came to South Africa in 1998, so I missed our own version by a few years. In a perverse way, living under Trump’s rising autocracy might at least be entertaining.
South Africa is not on the exclusion list for now. But keep your fingers crossed. We are strictening our visa policy and, by September, visas at the border will be no longer. America may see the home affairs department’s move, though applying to everyone around the world, as targeted at it alone, as it does with everything.
And then, Marco Rubio’s department of state, viewing this as a personal affront, might just vindictively add South Africa to the list of egregious offenders. Ironically, the illusory white genocide keeps us safer, because Washington must hold the doors open to more aspiring Boer-Americans. Since nationality trumps (no pun intended) race in such things, even if for purely administrative reasons, as philosophically and politically abhorrent as the white genocide story is, the situation is positive in a way.
Me personally? I can go back and forth without a visa either way, being a dual citizen. Once, my presidents were Trump and Jacob Zuma. Now Trump, for one, is back again. And so I will use this status to infiltrate via my family’s beachhead in Long Island, and send back reports.
If my adopted country evades a future travel ban to keep the door open for MAWA’s bigger needs, let’s perhaps be grateful for the functional benefit of letting these apostates through the gates. As long as the narrative of white South Africans needing political asylum holds, as reprehensible a story as it tells, this sort of reverse fronting policy leaves us off of the list of pariahs for the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, given what’s going on, we might prefer, spiritually, to be on such a list. With America busy nudging us toward World War III, maybe we’d rather be publicly identified as personae non gratae in that culture.
Given that our own future may, shockingly, be tied to the success of our erstwhile refugees across the shining sea, I was thinking it might be useful for us to find out where things stand with them.
Where are they now? What’s become of them since landing in Atlanta? Why did the government choose one of the blackest cities in the country for their entry? Are they tilling the fields of rural Georgia, or living in Athens row houses or Savannah penthouses? Are they blending in, or sticking out like sore veld transplants? Are they driving tractors now, or Teslas? Is their preferred trauma therapy ploughing peanuts in Tifton or playing golf in Augusta? How many others might join them later? Have any already come back home, disillusioned? Do their LinkedIn profiles now label them as global agricultural executives? Was it all just a media opportunity, or will this, alongside the travel ban, become long-term US policy?
There are so many questions. Admittedly, I have a personal interest here as well. My fiancée is short steps away from being naturalised as a member of Mzansi. Keeping South Africa off Trump’s naughty list might just save our marriage.
Look out for my next column from the land of the free, to find out more.
Michael Lee is the Mail & Guardian’s US correspondent currently based in New York.