South Africa’s new special envoy to the United States is likely to be the next person President Donald Trump seeks to expel from the U.S., just as he did the South African ambassador last month because Ebrahim Rasool dared to disagree with Trump’s politics publicly, calling out the president’s glaring “supremacist instinct.”
Well, it turns out that Mcebisi Jonas, a former deputy finance minister who was appointed Monday by President Cyril Ramaphosa to be the special envoy to the U.S., had, in 2020, called Trump a racist, homophobic and narcissistic “right-winger” because — bruh — Donald Trump is demonstrably a racist, homophobic and narcissistic right-winger among other things. (He’s also a felon, a compulsive liar, a misogynist, an ableist, a sexual assault facilitator, an Islamaphobe, a xenophobe and a practicing fascist if we’re keeping a list.)
From the Associated Press:
The new South African envoy’s speech criticizing Trump and his first term was delivered on Nov. 8, 2020, five days after the election where Joe Biden defeated Trump. His comments have been circulated in the media.
“Right now, the U.S. is undergoing a watershed moment, with Biden the certain winner in the presidential race against the racist, homophobic Donald Trump,” Jonas said. “How we got to a situation where a narcissistic right-winger took charge of the world’s greatest economic and military powerhouse is something that we need to ponder over. It is something that all democracies need to ponder over.”
Mcebisi Jonas was delivering South Africa’s annual Ahmed Kathrada Lecture, where public figures are invited to give a speech for the foundation of Kathrada, one of the anti-apartheid activists put on trial by the white minority government in the 1960s and imprisoned alongside Nelson Mandela.
Speaking of Nelson Mandela, it’s worth mentioning that Trump has, multiple times, erroneously compared himself to the late anti-apartheid activist and former president of South Africa, which is ironic considering Trump’s current low-information stance on the region, which ignores South Africa’s history of apartheid in favor of a fictional narrative regarding white Afrikaners, who own 72% of the private farmland in South Africa while representing only 9% of the country’s population.
More from AP:
South Africa has been a prime target for Trump’s criticism.
He has falsely accused the South African government of allowing violent attacks on white minority farmers and seizing their land, claims that have been rejected by political parties across the spectrum and experts in South Africa.
A new land expropriation law does allow the government to expropriate some land without compensation as long as it’s in the public interest. No land has been taken under it. But its passing led groups representing some of South Africa’s white minority to lobby the Trump administration for help, saying their land was likely to be targeted.
Trump has also announced a program offering white South African farmers refugee status in the U.S.
In other words, Trump — along with his partner in international white nationalism, Elon Musk — is now denying the provable existence of anti-Black systemic racism while promoting the provably fictional existence of anti-white systemic racism on two different continents.
Anyway, during Jonas’ 2020 speech, he celebrated Trump’s election loss, saying, “Hopefully, the defeat of Trump will deal a blow to the deglobalization lobby.”
Now, if there’s anything Trump hates more than being called a bigot, it’s being called a loser, especially when he demonstrably was one. So, now Mcebisi Jonas is in a position where he has to work within a second Trump presidency he didn’t likely see coming more than four years ago. According to AP, after he was appointed as his nation’s special envoy to the U.S., he would do his best to “promote a healthy working relationship” between South Africa and the U.S., but said he’s also aware of the “difficulties that lie ahead considering recent global developments.”
Yeah — that’s putting it mildly.
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