South Africa: American Economic Aggression

Well, look. I mean, let's be clear. When when The United States in 2025, when The United States resorts to sanctions or financial coercion, economic coercion, propaganda campaigns, and so forth against a country like South Africa, The truth is it's not acting from a position of strength. I think it's very important to remember this. These are the tactics of a declining empire that's trying to maintain control.

It's not the acts these aren't the actions of a confident superpower that's trying to secure its dominance. This soft power aggression, whether it's freezing aid, economic pressure through sanctions, and so forth, or disinformation campaign, like what sister Anisa is talking about. This is designed to create division within your society. It's designed to undermine your leadership's credibility, and ultimately to try to force you into submission, a kind of submission that you don't need to be forced into. It only works if you let it.

This is the this is the reality. I think South Africa has to recognize that these measures are not a reflection of your weakness, but it's a it's a reflection of your strategic importance. You're being targeted because you have the potential in South Africa to be a leader in Africa, to be an independent force as has been proved with your actions at the ICJ. You can be a force against the the the exploitative dynamics of of of the global economic system. This is why Washington feels the need to try to contain you.

So what should South Africa do, you ask? What what should the response be? Well, economic self sufficiency has to be a priority. You have to reduce your dependence on American trade. You have to reduce your dependence on the American banking institutions, western financial systems, and so on.

You need to deepen your ties with alternative partners like, of course, obviously, BRICS is a is a obvious avenue for that. But beyond that, you have to explore stronger relationships across the global South and within African regional alliances, as well as obviously with Asia and the Middle Eastern countries, the GCC and so on, countries that share your interest in independence from Western hegemony. Second, and I think this is very important, you should call America's bluff. If they cut aid, then just restructure your economy to function without it. Like Anisa said, it's not that important, what they're giving.

If they impose sanctions, then leverage that as an opportunity to develop internal industries. If they weaponize trade, okay, diversify your markets. There's no law that says that South Africa must remain in an economic relationship with America where it's always on the receiving end of coercion. You don't have to do that. And third, I would say, you need to turn this soft power aggression into your strength.

Expose their hypocrisy. Expose their hypocrisy. Take their own language of human rights and democracy and fairness and so forth and use it to highlight their own violations. The violations of the UN Charter like Sister said, challenge their whole narrative on all international forms like at the UN, align with other nations that have suffered similar treatment by the at the hands of The United States, whether it's Venezuela or Iran or Russia or China and on and on and on. There's no limit.

There's no end of the of the countries that have suffered. The US does not have the ability to actually control South Africa unless South Africa allows itself to be controlled. Their economic threats only have power if you remain within the structures that make you vulnerable to those threats. You know, if you step outside of that system, then suddenly all of their weapons of coercion lose their impact. You understand?

So the the the answer is to resist, to reform, and to realign. The era of blindly submitting to American pressure is over, in my opinion. South Africa has the power, in fact, to chart its own course. It has the will or it has the the ability. The question is whether or it has the will to do so.

But I think that there's a lot you can do, and I think that you should take a position of what you can call strategic indifference to what America is doing. Because like I said, you have to you have to bear in mind that this is these actions that they're taking actually reflect an empire that is in decline and that is in retreat. So don't don't take their threat so seriously because the truth of the matter is, anyway, my opinion, they are withholding aid because they can't afford it. They're coming up with a reason. They're coming up with their own rationale.

They're coming up with their own justification that serves their domestic I mean, think about what what he's saying. On the one hand, he's saying that the that the land is being expropriated unjustly. But rather than saying that we want those, you know, supposedly according to their narrative, rather than saying we want those white farmers to keep their land and so forth, he's saying come to America. In other words, you don't care about them having the land. This is it's not even about them.

You're saying go ahead and leave South Africa, which just makes it easier to take their land according to the narrative that you are propagating. So you're not actually interested in trying to keep so called white farmers on their land. That's not by your own narrative, it's contradictory when you're also saying that they can come to The United States as refugees. You understand? It's this is this is there's a there's a contradiction in their own narrative, which means that what you're really opposed to is South Africa determining themselves what to do with their own land for their for the benefit of their own people.

What you're objecting to is their exercising of their sovereignty. But in fact, like I said and like what sister Nisa was talking about, the the amount of money that you are depriving South Africa of is not sufficient to actually cause them to capitulate. There's no reason whatsoever that South Africa should take this threat seriously because it's a hollow threat. South Africa is not the only country that they're freezing aid. They're freezing aid all over the world.

They're freezing all foreign aid. Even they're putting their own CIA on the chopping block. They're they're going to do a an audit of the Pentagon, and defense and military spending and so forth. All of these are indications that The United States is in retreat. They are in regression.

They are withdrawing from their international assets, say, their international interests as a country on a state level. Now, brother was talking about the the businesses and so forth that are in South Africa. I would make a I would separate this from the state level. Because, like, for example, the money that that America is now denying South Africa, It doesn't matter what you do, that money is not coming back. You should understand this.

They are coming up with the excuse that it's for this reason or that reason or the other reason, but the fact of the matter is they need the money. That money is not coming back no matter what you do. If they can get you to comply and to capitulate to whatever demands they might call upon for you to capitulate to, it doesn't matter. That money is not coming back. The same goes for all of the other countries where they are freezing the aid.

The money isn't coming back. They're coming with an excuse. They're coming with a reason to try to make themselves look like it's not just because they're broke, but it's because they're broke. And they're trying to start fights with all of these countries that they're withdrawing from to make it look like those countries are in the wrong when actually they just can't admit the fact that they can't maintain their empire anymore. This isn't rhetoric.

This isn't idealism. This is just a reality. Even Marco Rubio himself, the new secretary of state said it himself on an interview recently where he said that America is no longer the unipolar power of the world. They're no longer the unipolar superpower. The unipolar superpower moment that began with the fall of the Soviet Union, that moment has passed into history.

The translation of that is America is a regional power. America is now a regional power, and we are in, as he said himself, the secretary of state of The United States Of America said himself that we are now in a multipolar world. A multipolar world means that you have the country being I'm sorry, the the the planet is being divided up into spheres of influence spheres of influence that are created around regional hegemons. Regional hegemons, not a single unipolar superpower. Regional superpowers.

Like, for example, South Africa, like, for example, Nigeria, like, for example, all of the rich nations, Russia, China, the GCC, Turkey, Egypt to a certain extent, and obviously The United States. And The United States is primarily interested in the Northern, the the global North. They're interested in the Western Hemisphere. This is why they're turning their sights on Europe. This is why they're turning their sights against their own previous allies.

They're not as interested in maintaining their as a state now, remember, I'm making a difference between the state and the private sector. The private sector is a different issue. But on the state level, they're not interested in maintaining this empire globally anymore because they simply cannot do it. And because of the private sector power, which is now anational. Private sector power is anational.

I won't say multinational because it simply doesn't belong to any nation. It floats above borders. The a national, owners and controllers of global financialized capital, have global interests, and they are that group of private sector players are from every country in the world. There are South Africans who are in this group of people. I'm not actually, you know, I don't mean to put forward the idea that it's an organized group of people, but it's it's it's a shared set of interests that are global, and they are interested also in America receding from its international interference because the future of the global economy is in the global South.

So for example, if you talk about McDonald's, you're talking about a national private sector power. You're not talking about America. You're talking about a national private sector power. You're talking about when you have these companies in your country. These are not they're only American on paper.

The shareholders are global, and they are interested in a different kind of economic system, a different kind of political system to what we have all known for the last fifty, sixty, hundred years. So I would say to a diplomat, you should be aware of this trend, you should be aware of what's actually happening, and understand that the risks that you perceive are involved in confronting America, in standing up against America, those risks made sense thirty years ago. That that that fear made sense thirty years ago, but that timidity is no longer pragmatic. Being timid and being acquiescent was a pragmatic approach in 1995, but not in 2025. Now the world has changed.

The global power dynamics have changed. The way that the world is moving, the trends are going in a different direction. And like I said, the center of gravity of the global economy is moving to the South and to the East. You can stand up to America today. You absolutely can stand up to America today.

And like Sistenisa was talking about, South Africa is in an extremely strong and powerful position with regards to the leverage that they have. Now you've never wanted to use that leverage in the past because you were afraid of making America angry. And you had reason to believe that. You had reason to to be afraid of that, but you don't have a reason to to to be afraid of that anymore. The the the the empire is in retreat.

That's just a fact. If you look at the at at everything that has been going on, and it's not just Trump, it was happening under Biden as well. So I would say to any diplomat, to any politician, to any government official or what or what have you who who is considering article six, there are massive elements within the private sector, powerful elements within the private sector who will not oppose you. And and the state America, their state power has for many many decades now followed the interest of the private sector. And if the private sector isn't against the invocation of article six, against America, then you don't have much to worry about.

I mean, you can see Trump is is withdrawing from all international obligations. He's withdrawing from all international treaties, international agreements, international organizations. He may even withdraw from NATO. They already withdrew from the Human Rights Council. It's not impossible to consider to conceive that Trump himself would remove The United States from the United Nations even without us invoking article six.

But in my opinion, the only reason that he wouldn't, and I'm sorry, I'm going on so long, but the only reason that they they they don't wanna be removed from the United Nations is because exactly because of the power shift, and that the the global South is now coming into a position where we can reclaim control or or take control since we never had control, we can't say reclaim, but we can take control of the United Nations and actually have it work properly. And they don't want it to work properly because they know, as I said before, that they are eligible for prosecution under international law. But I don't think that it's appropriate, I don't think it's wise, I don't think it's pragmatic for any diplomatic personnel or for any government official or for any government in the global South to feel timid today or to feel intimidated today because the fact of the matter is that America is in retreat. Even if they're shooting in the air, they're shooting in the air while they're running away. So I don't think that you need to lack any confidence in what America may or may not do.

You just chart your own course and you can break free from American domination and that in my opinion, there's no question about that. Should should get out of their mind any pessimism, you should get out of your mind any hopelessness, you should get out of your mind any concept that this isn't something that can be done, that international justice and international global justice and international institutions of justice cannot function properly. It's not true. We can claim these institutions. There can be equality before the law.

There can be a rules based order in which the rules are being followed by everyone, not being dictated by one and obeyed by everyone else. We can actually have international law applied equally to all nations, but there's only one way that we can ever achieve that, which is to get the you know, you have like in like in those old cowboy movies when I was growing up in America, you always have these characters in the cowboy movies where it's an outlaw who becomes a sheriff of a town. And he's still an outlaw, but he's got a tin badge. That's what America has done with their security council position at the at the United Nations. It's an outlaw with a sheriff's badge.

And the article six campaign is gonna knock the sheriff's badge off of his chest and hold him accountable like everyone else. And there's no reason why that can't be done. And if you believe that it can't be done, then this is a symptom of psychological colonization in your mind that has made you have an inflated idea about America's power and America's importance. And I want you to understand that that power and importance never was what you thought it was, but even whatever importance and whatever power that they used to have, they don't have to the same degree now as they did then. So there's no reason whatsoever that this can't be done.

And if you have pessimism, if you believe that it can't be done, then that's every reason that you should support it so that you can help to heal yourself from that doubt and from that psychological colonization and be part of the change that can actually bring real justice, international law to the world as we all need. So thank you so much, and I thank you brother for hosting hosting us on this platform, and I wanna thank all of the team for everything they had to say, and thank the audience for joining us today.