The US presidential election being contested by the vice-president Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and the 45th US president, the Republican party’s Donald Trump, has echoes of the post-Cold War elections since 1990.
Examples are the fear of the buffoonish George W Bush in the 2000 presidential candidacy; a woman candidate beholden to, and created by, the political elite and corporations, like Hillary Clinton was in 2016; significant interference by past presidents in who the Democratic nominee should be, like Barack Obama in 2020 to ensure Joe Biden got the nomination; co-operation between Republican and Democrat elites, as they did in 2020 so Biden was elected, and, of course, pillorying of any and all if they suggest voting for a third-party candidate, as in the case of the Green Party’s Ralph Nader in 2000.
This time around though, unlike in those previous elections, the mask has been pulled off the US and its intentions.
Trump, unlike previous US presidents, refused to keep up the facade in multilateral forums. He did not pretend that the UN, the G7 or Nato were collectives that discussed matters in the interest of global peace, security and economic well-being.
Trump exposed the US’s true face — the belief that all institutions must serve the interests of the US empire. Trump was made out to be an anomaly as he did not reflect the US as a benign global power — an altruistic power that serves the greater good.
But with the US having openly aided and abetted Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, the mask has been effectively ripped off and the US’s duplicity exposed for all to see.
Although it is not as straightforward in the Russia-Ukraine war because Russia invaded, the weaponising of the US dollar by the US has revealed its “America über alles” attitude.
Under the Democrats, there has also been the systematic ratcheting-up of the global economic war against China. Thus, the US under the Democrats, not Trump, has been exposed as a warmonger, regardless of whoever is in charge.
If its interests are not prioritised, it has no problem with taking the world into any type of war.
All the latest polls from CBS News/YouGov to ABC News/Ipsos have one thing in common — the margins between Trump and Harris are razorblade-thin, especially in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Democrats have gone into overdrive, warning that anyone voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein is helping Trump, and therefore installing a “fascist” in the White House, apparently not recognising their own fascist tendencies during this period.
Historically, Arab-Americans have supported the Democrats and you would expect them to support Harris, especially because Trump has been openly Islamophobic at times.
But the genocide in Palestine has forced many Arab-Americans into either withholding their vote or supporting Stein.
The Arab-American community is smaller than the Latino and African-American communities but, in a battleground state like Michigan, their numbers have a direct effect.
There has even been substantial increase in support for Trump among African-American men, as well as in Latino communities, forcing Obama to accuse the former of not wanting to support a woman.
Whoever decided the election should take place on 5 November — Guy Fawkes Day — could be subliminally sending a message.
The day was to commemorate the arrest of Guy Fawkes in 1605 and the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot by Catholic fundamentalists who wanted to overthrow the Protestant king of England by blowing up parliament.
The message is that, no matter who wins, we could be witnessing the blowing up of the facade of Western democracy.
If Trump wins, we must expect that the US will want all countries to bow down and swear their allegiance. They will have to guarantee that they will buy US goods over Chinese ones.
A Trump administration will be brazen and open in its view that the world needs the US but not the other way around.
If there is a Harris victory, her administration might not be as openly belligerent as Trump’s but it could prove to be as damaging.
We can expect the deliberate sowing of divisions in various parts of the world. We can envisage a divided African Union, where countries will begin defining themselves into various antagonistic blocs, given the economic dependence many have on the US, France and Canada on one hand and China on the other.
The increase in trade with China, and the enhanced security role Russia has begun to play in West Africa, could come under threat after the elections.
South Africa’s involvement in Brics, and our brave stance on Palestine at the International Court of Justice, allows us a modicum of manoeuvrability but it will not be enough.
This is especially true because the champion of South Africa’s commendable independent foreign policy approach is the ANC, which now is a part of a government of national unity, with a number of conservative and US-supporting political parties, namely the Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
These parties do not support Palestinian liberation and would prefer closer relations with the West than China and Russia.
South Africa has to navigate this period carefully. It can learn from how it operated between 1994 and about 2006. After Nelson Mandela’s outburst against Nigeria in 1995, it was able to quickly mend fences, show it does not define itself outside of the continent of Africa and accepted the authority of the African institutions.
After Mandela retired in 1999, president Thabo Mbeki, together with his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo, established the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad).
Although Egypt, Algeria and Senegal were counted as founding members, it was South Africa and Nigeria that drove the programme to modernise African institutions, promote peace and security and enable economic integration and development, among other matters.
We have observed how moribund Nepad has become now that it is just one of the many AU agencies.
Indeed, the rising right-wing Christian fundamentalism and the growing relations with Israel in East and Southern Africa have a direct effect on the political character of institutions such as the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community.
We need to recognise that African regional and sub-regional institutions cannot be relied upon.
South Africa’s political outlook of progressive internationalism is commendable and must be jealously guarded at all costs but, for it to be cemented in Africa, it requires South Africa and Nigeria to have the closest of relations and to work in tandem, like they did when establishing Nepad and in the period thereafter.
The country’s economy has to benefit from its successful foreign policy.
The belligerent stance taken by the EU and Canada in increasing custom tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles has provoked a response from Beijing, which substantially cut its imports of Canadian canola oil, as well as imports of pork from the EU and cognac and luxury goods from France.
The South African government must step in and subsidise local companies to supply these goods to China.
For instance, we have a huge pork industry. The government can broker a deal with China to supply its pork according to Chinese standards. It can insist that any commercial farmer who wants to benefit from this trade agreement must partner with small farmers, mainly black people.
We must also protect the South African pork market and regulate the price and the supply.
We can do this for brandy and canola oil as well.
There is economic opportunity for South Africa in this trade war. We would be foolish not to use our comparative advantage of being in Brics.
Whatever the outcome of the elections in the US, the rest of the world can just hope third-party candidate Stein gets so many votes that, even though she will not win, it scares the American political duopoly of the Republicans and Democrats.
South Africa must take a deep breath, shore up its alliances on the continent and in the rest of the world, and not be afraid to exploit the opportunities that present themselves.
Donovan E Williams is a social commentator. @TheSherpaZA on X.
Whoever wins, the country needs to build its ties on the continent and the rest of the world and exploit the opportunities that are created
