One image circulating on South African social media shows a stark white wall in Cape Town’s Blauberg with the word “Trump” triumphantly and professionally painted in bright red and the words “#47 #45” in smug blue.
This is as pathetic as it is infuriating. What is it about the Donald Trump story that excites our middle class flabby politicians? And yes, pun intended. Because these people are really stupid.
You’ve probably been perplexed by how many people in our podcasting classes wear red “Make America Great Again” hats. This is a cheaper version of what Guardian writer Caroline Haskins calls the manosphere. Hey, they must be very happy to have their fantasy president back in the saddle. Finally, it makes sense to be an alpha male again in this country! And more often than not, it’s white and alpha male.
A study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that “the main predictors of support for Trump, across party affiliation, gender, race, and education level, were beliefs in ‘hegemonic masculinity’, in which men held positions of power, were ‘mentally, physically and emotionally tough,’ feminine or homosexual. Some maverick influencers have gained a following by embodying and promoting this very brand of masculinity, giving their followers a script to blame women for their dissatisfaction. ”
CNN and other US media outlets, perhaps regretting the business threats posed by alienating statements they have made in the past, are rushing to fabricate a narrative that the American people are not racist misogynists who voted for Daddy, but are actually complex people heavily influenced by Kamala Harris and President Trump’s economic views. Perhaps that’s true (Narrator: Not really), but I guarantee you that race is behind much of the Trump worship we’ve cultivated at home. either way. To put it in a confusing way, it is not just masculinity that is under threat in South Africa, but a certain kind of historical masculinity.
Elon Musk, the South African manosphere’s Jesus to Trump’s god, has also now been freed to rightfully enjoy the title of the richest man in the world. After Trump’s victory was deemed inevitable, X posted a photo of Trump holding a sink in the Oval Office with the caption, “Let it sink.” He posted a similar photo when he took over Twitter in 2022, and will no doubt be overjoyed at the prospect of rebranding America of A to America of X. Not to mention all the policy influence he’s trying to wield. At the very least, this is starting to make colonizing Mars seem like an attractive prospect.
Now, back to the local Trumpists. They don’t think it’s cool for Trump to be anti-immigrant, for example. Although that’s kind of crazy considering how furious they were when the EFF told them to go back to Europe. It’s that they don’t seem to realize how pathetic it is that they have to adopt the propaganda of other countries to understand their own.
Binyavanga Wainaina, the late, great Kenyan writer who was the subject of an excellent essay by Jeremy Harding in the London Review of Books (LRB) a few weeks ago, will surely go to his grave. In his 2005 satirical essay “How to Write About Africa,” Wainaina wrote scathingly about the ways in which Western countries impose stereotypical narratives when writing about Africa. Hits like poverty, colorful natives, and anthropomorphic animals are all included.
Sample: “In your writing, treat Africa as if it were one country. It’s hot and dusty, with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and hungry, tall, skinny people. Or it’s hot and muggy, with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down in the exact description. Africa is big. 54 countries, 9 Billions of people are too busy with hunger and death and war and migration to read your books.
“Don’t put a picture of a well-dressed African on the cover or in a book, unless the African has won a Nobel Prize. Use AK-47s, prominent ribs, bare chests. If you must have an African, make sure you have an African in Maasai, Zulu, or Dogon costume.”
And now we have a version just as ridiculous. Africans, in this case South Africans, use the stories of American strongmen to talk about and even understand their country. It’s embarrassing. At least write your own BS.
And now we have a version just as ridiculous. Africans, in this case South Africans, use the stories of American strongmen to talk about and even understand their country. It’s embarrassing. At least write your own BS
In his LRB article, Harding quotes fellow Kenyan author Nanjala Nyabola’s essay titled “Why Does the Western Media Get Africa Misunderstood?” Nyabola argues that Western journalists who are the first to arrive on the scene and submit a story (often a disaster story) are treated as more trustworthy voices than local bloggers or reporters. The result, she writes, is often an unconscious explanation: “Foreign correspondents from African countries would have no trouble finding the same fault lines in Europe and America, but that the West is different, a chaotic world torn apart by ethnic tensions, poverty, and conflict.”
How true that is! Rather than uncritically folding the Trumpists’ master narrative, we should turn the tables and write about how chaotic the fault lines of American democracy are. And after all, they could learn from us.
In an essay he wrote for the Mail & Guardian in 2008, “The Aspiring Dictator’s Guide”, Wainaina laid out some rules for being a successful African dictator. This rule could also be beneficially adopted by President-elect Trump.
Rule 1: “Be the richest person in your country.” Mr. Wainaina gives some examples: “If you are a second-generation dictator, this is not difficult. Just blackmail your predecessor… If you are from an oil-rich country, this is even easier (many Nigerians, Angolans, Chad)… If you are South African, anything with the words ‘black empowerment’ on it will work.”
Trump made an even smarter move here. Although he is not the richest person in the United States, he is on par with the richest people in the world. That’s first world sophistication for you.
Does Rule 3 apply in some twisted way? “Make America or China happy. Make Israel and Saudi Arabia very happy.” Oddly enough, it does. Trump just adds Russia to the mix. Rule 10 is unfortunately very applicable (see CNN’s radical statement above): “Freedom of the press is important. But make sure you own stock in all the major media outlets and allow all media outlets but yours to be very critical.” And rule 12 will be the biggest key for Trump. “Be kind to the dictators of the world. Someday you may need to give them a home.”
That doesn’t mean we should ignore what’s happening in the democracy that was once known as freedom. I’m reading Zeinab Badawi’s A History of Africa. This book provides an alternative perspective to the Western narratives of colonialism and slavery that have dominated this subject. I was struck by a passage about a reinterpretation of the history of Dido, the founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage in 814 BC.
Badawi writes about meeting Tunisian archaeologist Leila Lajmi Sebai at the ruins of Carthage and discussing Dido. Lajmi-Sevai said: “With great enthusiasm… how extraordinary and pioneering a woman Dido was to her, and how Virgil had completely misrepresented her story… Leila said that Dido actually committed suicide because she did not want to marry a Berber leader.” And this is Badawi’s standout comment. “The details of Dido’s story are less important than the fact that Leila and many other scholars on the African continent are challenging established Western understandings of history that have overlooked their perspectives.”
Badawi isn’t talking about J.D. Vance here. You may remember that Vance said he was fine with making up facts as long as the story got out. Her point is that the facts at issue are not important, but the fact that Africans have taken the time to challenge those facts and push back against the assumptions of Western discourse. Could our local Trumpists be more like this? I mean, come on. Take ownership of your own shitty country. Trump doesn’t care.
