Appealing to US for leverage damages Afrikaner cause at home
· Citizen
International cooperation rests on a deceptively simple principle: sovereign states engage one another as partners, not as principals and subordinates.
That principle is especially important in 2026, when governments face shared pressures that no country can manage alone. It is a principle that Donald Trump’s administration is not bothered by at all.
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In fact, sovereignty seems to be a foreign word to that administration, hence its audacity to present a list of “five asks” to South Africa, the response to which normal relations between South Africa and the US depend.
When one government presents another with “asks” that resemble compliance tests, it narrows the space for dialogue and encourages public posturing on both sides.
What complicates matters further though is that the “five asks” are based entirely on what one group of people in South Africa has gone and presented to the US and the Trump administration has taken the representations by that group as gospel truth.
Today, bilateral relations between SA and the US are at an all-time low because the US has seen fit to do the political bidding of Ernst Roets and his far-right companions.
Roets and his friends curry favour with Trump and his government today, forgetting that all-time warning by US fantasy novelist Erin Morgenstern: “All empires fall eventually. It is the way of things.”
In fact, while Roets and company can go and plant 3 000 crosses representing “farm murders in South Africa”, the empire that allows such an imbalanced view of South Africa as a country actually has a sell-by date.
Two years from now, the cause that Roets weaponised against this country might need a complete overhaul because it is not based on universal truths that will stand the test of time. What that will do to their overall cause remains to be seen.
External pressure will never resolve South Africa’s national problems. What it does is it hardens positions. ANC leaders might be banned from travelling to the US, which many will not really lose sleep over.
But the saddest part is that a domestic organisation that has all the rights afforded to South African citizens and organisations has managed to convince an external power that ANC leaders deserve the same harsh treatment that the US dishes out to terror-linked organisations and tinpot dictators.
Domestic political organisations carry a responsibility.
Appealing to a foreign government for leverage in local disputes may produce short-term attention, but it can weaken the very constituencies those organisations claim to represent.
It shifts persuasion away from fellow citizens and constitutional institutions towards actors who are not accountable to South African voters.
In the long-term, that strategy is self-defeating. Afrikaners might have legitimate concerns, but the chosen path to get those concerns addressed is totally damaging to their cause.
The result is suspicions – with Roets and company being viewed by South Africans as hankering for a past that has landed the country where it is today: the most unequal society in the world.
The durable path for South Africa is not submission to US “asks”, which are essentially the asks of a minority group in the country. It is principled engagement internally, before involving foreign powers.
Political organisations best serve their supporters by building trust at home, not by borrowing power from abroad. But for Roets and the Trump administration, this all means nothing.
They are blinded by short-term gains but completely forget that international cooperation in 2026 begins when countries stop issuing tests of obedience and start negotiating as equals.