A sitting president was kidnapped in full public view, the event announced and celebrated live on social media.
On January 3, the US abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, violating international law in an illegal operation cynically packaged as an anti-drug trafficking intervention. US President Donald Trump confirmed the kidnapping himself, boasting about it online and openly stating that the real objective was to secure Venezuela’s oil for US companies — a display of megalomania so brazen it dispensed with even the pretence of legality.
There is no credible evidence that Maduro is a drug trafficker. There never was. What there is, is oil, and a superpower willing to violate international law to take it.
There is no credible evidence of a so-called white genocide in South Africa either; there never has been. Yet that lie has been repeated, laundered through fringe platforms, echoed by powerful figures — including Trump himself — and increasingly normalised in international discourse.
Trump’s brazenness has demonstrated the endgame of this process. Evidence is no longer required, only narrative usefulness. Once a fiction becomes politically convenient, it can be inflated into justification for sanctions, criminalisation and ultimately force. In that context, the idea that an invented atrocity could be used to fabricate charges against President Cyril Ramaphosa, spirit him off to New York under the theatre of legality and open South Africa to pillage, is not alarmist. It is the logical extension of a doctrine already in motion.
A sufficient chorus would be ready to explain why it was necessary, overdue and lawful. That is how sovereignty is stolen in plain sight.
The message was simple: sovereignty is conditional. International law is optional. Resources will be taken and the justifications will follow later — if at all. For the Global South, this moment should have landed like a thunderclap. For South Africa, it should have triggered outright alarm.
The department of international relations and co-operation issued a clear statement condemning the violation of international law in Venezuela and rejecting the kidnapping of a sitting head of state. That intervention was correct and necessary. But diplomatic statements, however principled, are not enough in a moment where force is being normalised as a tool of extraction. Without internal political coherence and firm domestic alignment, even the strongest foreign policy positions are left exposed.
We are living through the return of naked resource colonialism, stripped of the polite language that once disguised it. Criminalisation, military force and corporate interest now operate in full view. In this world, countries are not conquered only through invasion; they are softened through internal division, policy confusion and ideological drift. Once softened, they are harvested.
At precisely the moment when global competition for minerals, energy and strategic resources has turned openly coercive, South Africa has chosen coalition governance without coherence. The ANC–DA coalition is not a symbol of unity; it is a contradiction masquerading as stability. It binds together two irreconcilable economic visions and calls the resulting paralysis pragmatism.
At precisely the moment when global competition for minerals, energy and strategic resources has turned openly coercive, South Africa has chosen coalition governance without coherence. The ANC–DA coalition is not a symbol of unity; it is a contradiction masquerading as stability. It binds together two irreconcilable economic visions and calls the resulting paralysis pragmatism.
A government that cannot speak clearly about transformation cannot defend it. A state that treats redress as negotiable signals to external capital that resistance will be minimal. When policy shifts are smuggled through administrative manoeuvres rather than democratic mandate, the country becomes capturable.
Attempts to bypass empowerment requirements to accommodate foreign corporate interests are not technical adjustments. They are precedents. Today it is communications. Tomorrow, it is energy, water, minerals and land. Each exception weakens the architecture of sovereignty. Each concession teaches external actors exactly how far they can push.
Worse than the BEE fight, the Starlink row exposed a legislative vacuum. South Africa has lacked a modern, clear statutory and regulatory framework governing foreign satellite services leaving sovereignty negotiable, where it should be settled by law. In the absence of clear satellite legislation, any requirement — whether empowerment, licensing, national security or data sovereignty — can be cast as unreasonable obstruction.
The international context matters. The US did not merely kidnap a foreign president. It has also appointed openly hostile figures as envoys and discarded diplomatic restraint. South Africa should therefore reject the accreditation of L. Brent Bozell III.
We are mineral-rich. We are politically fragmented. We are negotiating our foundational economic principles in the language of compromise rather than conviction. These are precisely the conditions under which external pressure succeeds without resistance.
If the republic is to protect itself in an era of open extraction, the ANC must abandon the Government of National Unity and pursue a clear, programmatic coalition with the MK Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters. Such a configuration is not about comfort. It is about restoring policy coherence, advancing unapologetic positions on land, ownership, industrial strategy and foreign alignment, and closing the internal fractures that external powers exploit.
The lesson from Venezuela is not abstract. It is brutally concrete. Resources will be taken. Narratives will be manufactured. Legalities will be adjusted after the fact. Countries that believe they are protected by goodwill or precedent are fooling themselves.
The era of polite extraction is over. What follows will not wait for us to find our footing. If South Africa does not defend its economic sovereignty with intention and unity, others will decide its future for it.
History will not ask whether we were reasonable. It will ask whether we were awake.
- Sexwale is a communications consultant, political strategist and public commentator.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.