To understand what South Africa’s relationship with the US looks like, you must understand the Resolute desk. And Elon Musk.
Nothing screams “American power” quite like the Resolute desk. This is the massive desk that dominates the Oval Office, the US president’s working space. The Resolute desk has become a feature of American political culture through being flashed around the world in movies, newspapers, television shows and other media. Over the past two weeks it has been part of the news every day as US President Donald Trump has signed one incendiary “executive order” after another on it, upending global trade and diplomatic relations.
In times of crisis, it is from behind this desk that American presidents hold a phone in their hand and get their pictures taken to project that they are in charge and acting to deal with the situation. It is from behind the 590kg Resolute desk that presidents from John F. Kennedy to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, have been pictured making groundbreaking calls to Vladimir Putin and many others across the globe.
Last week Time, the global weekly news magazine which still holds significant sway in the US, and which is a favourite of Trump’s, published a simple, beautiful, understated yet very powerful cover. A man is sitting at the imposing Resolute desk, his eyes staring straight ahead, a coffee in his hand and two flags — the American flag and the president’s flag — behind him.
That man is not Donald Trump. It is Elon Musk, the billionaire South African who has played a divisive, domineering, oversized role in the US’s politics over the past two years and whose influence has catapulted him to the top of American society and politics in recent weeks. Musk, suggests this cover, is the real president of the United States.
That cover illustrates why President Cyril Ramaphosa had to call Musk, and not Trump, last Monday following Trump’s untrue, unwarranted, unscientific outburst that South African leaders are targeting Afrikaners and that he would cut financial assistance and aid to the country. Ramaphosa knows, as does Time magazine, as does Trump himself, and as we should all know, that the man who wields a massive amount of real and perceived power in the US right now is Elon Musk. He may be unelected, he may be disliked by many, he may be divisive, but he has a powerful hold on the man who is indeed elected — Trump.
Some have tried to dislodge Musk. On January 12, Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon branded Musk a “racist” and a “truly evil guy” and claimed: “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration day”.
Well, inauguration day came on January 20 and Musk is still around.
What does Musk’s power mean for South Africa and the world? In very simple terms, we are seeing Musk try to rewrite history and work to install right-leaning administrations across the world. Everything that South Africa stands for is anathema to him. That means what we saw last week is the beginning, not the end, of what Musk, Trump, and their administration, particularly Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will unleash on South Africa.
Musk wants South Africa to pretend that the 46 years of apartheid rule that existed between 1948 and 1994 did not happen. He wants a “meritocratic” country in which there is no acknowledgment of or action to correct the long tail of black poverty, inequality and white supremacy which that system wrought.
Just a few weeks ago Musk made a surprise virtual appearance at a campaign event for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party. Musk believes that “only the AfD can save Germany”. Even right-wing parties in Europe have rejected the AfD after one of its leaders said Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS), which led the slaughter of six-million Jews, “were not all criminals”. At the AfD appearance, Musk told the chanting right-wingers that “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents.”
“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” he said
Musk said these things in the same week that he made a Nazi salute during a speech in Washington. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation, called on him to explain his gesture or apologise. He did not. The day after his salute he posted a series of Nazi-themed puns on X.
Musk has now amassed all the accoutrements — money, influence, position and power — to remake the world into what he wants it to be. In the US, he is setting fire to every institution he turns to. His Department of Government Efficiency has just destroyed USAID without a thought to the millions of poor people this will affect.
South Africa is in the crosshairs of a very powerful man called Elon Musk. He is sitting at the Resolute desk, and he has a blowtorch.
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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.