How President Donald Trump's cutting off of SA's US funding helps Africa fight 'begging bowl syndrome'

By Dr Dawn Nagar

President Donald Trump’s recent blanket statement made to cut South Africa’s funding completely, is in fact funding that is being cut, which is towards South Africa’s Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) people, provided through the United States (US) President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Project. A Plan to receive the necessary treatments to people to stay alive and meaningfully contribute towards the economy and intelligentsia of South Africa’s most unequal society in the world. This is the only funding that the US provides South Africa with, there is no other funding – so President Trump is going for the jugular vein indeed – again stripping another country from its lifeblood – its youth intelligentsia who are also among South Africans with HIV/AIDS.

We are concerned about our youth who is dependant on HIV/AIDS Funding programmes who cannot afford anti-retroviral drugs. We are particularly concerned with those youth and students – the upcoming  lawyers, doctors, advocates, public admin government technocrats, scholars, diplomats, public servants, health practitioners, businessmen, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and particularly the intelligentsia of our youth who are building brilliant renewable green energy and artificial intelligence (AI) projects vital for a fourth industrial revolution (4IR/4.0) and incoming fifth industrial revolution (5IR/5.0) initiatives, these are future tech boffins, and they are being eroded. By cutting this line of funding, undoubtedly would deprive and change millions of lives as well as see many deaths with senseless dying.   

This move made by President Trump is undignified and an utter human disgrace, since President Trump’s decision is going against and directly defying the United Nations (UN) 2030 Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda – notably goal 3 “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages,” which he Trump is not particularly interested in – and similarly his disinterest shown in climate change issues – regardless of the recent suffering in California with millions of people losing their homes owing to the severity of climate change issues there. Nevertheless, Trump’s strategy is to return to the World Banks Structural Adjustment Policies and neocolonial and capitalist ideologies to hit back at any country regardless of how big or small. But to hit back at such countries that is a perceived threat to the US in anyway and bully them. Trump is a nasty bully. It is a shame really, HIV and AIDS affects all people, regardless of human race, creed, religion or background and particularly eroding South Africa from economic prosperity through senseless dying. While there are decades of research with impressive anti-retroviral medications that can alleviate the pain and suffering as well as build the economic fabric so vital for South Africa’s socio-economic prosperity and growth, in the end funds are vital for so many organisations working on these issues. 

Thirty years into our democratic dispensation, and after four decades of another disgraceful apartheid 40-year horror, we are battling to unbridle ourselves from the scourge of mercantilist, and capitalists who are coming through both the front and the back doors entering our economies disguised in aid for trade packages and multilateralism beneficial to South Africa and the African continent, entangled in a web of agreements such as the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) (thankfully coming to an end), others such as Europe’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and among others, which are only breeding poverty and insecurity (See for example Dawn Nagar and Charles Mutasa (eds.), Africa and the World: Bilateral and Multilateral International Diplomacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018; and Challenging the United Nations Peace and Security Agenda in Africa | Dawn Nagar | Springer).

We are not sitting by idly and waiting for handouts, and our President Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa) has made it crystal clear that we are not in the begging-bowl syndrome nor in the Father Christmas Business either. As a member state of the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) and as one of Africa’s eight regional economic communities, we have not sat and watch our people die and suffer with HIV/AIDS in quiet, but on the contrary, over a period of 12 years since 2010, in Southern Africa we have managed to halve new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths. Currently, of the 380 million people in SADC, 17 million are living with HIV of which six million require life-saving treatment (Report of the Executive Secretary of SADC 2022/23, p. 8).

Secondly, President Trump is making his budget funding cut decision, which is a meagre 17 percent of the entire South Africa HIV/AIDS programme budget against the backdrop in the mind of President Trump that South Africa is grabbing land from white people and causing reverse racism. Certainly, it is not rocket science to know that this country (South Africa) is emerging from a very dark past that is only haunted by the ramifications of the apartheid architects – it was created to destroy democracies – therefore every policy and implementation apparatus matters more than ever – in a post-apartheid era today. How, what and why we execute and make decisions are vital. If 80 percent of land is still resting in the hands of a 20 percent minority – we are in trouble and will not get rid of poverty. Apartheid was created to affect economies within a new world order. This is what South Africa is experiencing now –apartheid policies that were implemented 40 years ago, the deprivation of equal rights and justice and, most importantly property. Therefore, President Trump, as a property guru and billionaire fully understand that depriving people from their property and land is the biggest hurdle to socio-economic growth and achieving economic prosperity. If 80 percent of your population is deprived from property and land and 20 percent privileged, certainly, this is a recipe for complete economic and socioeconomic under-development. 

Right now, South Africa has to match human and economic sense so that economics and policies align in order to achieve long-run economic growth and move the poorest of the poor of society and its people from the periphery of the periphery (gross poverty and lacking economic growth in comparison to the semi-peripheral and core economies), and provide them with the land which was removed from them from the apartheid government. The 80/20 (Black/White) equation must be rectified. See <Land reform | South African Government> (See also, Washington Post discussion <Trump threatens to cut U.S. aid to South Africa over land law>). 

Surely President Trump as a property owner understands this critical lifeblood vital for building economic prosperity, particularly if almost 40 percent of 62 million people are on social grants of R420 (about US$ 20) and who are black – surely something is amiss. South Africa has another three decades to obtain equality, restore justice and build economic prosperity in accord with the African Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063 Aspiration 3: “An Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law”, and also another thirty years to entirely rid itself from the apartheid architecture that was put in place which was designed to destroy democratic socio-economic development for years to come. Therefore, South Africa must work with like-minded global partners and build negotiations and peace where possible particularly between Ukraine and Russia – we can become formidable players in the global arena. Surely if only 560,000 of your youth under the age of 35 years old in 2022/23 have a bachelors pass degree out of 20 million youth of a 61 million population (at the time of stats) degree (statsSA 2024 report. p. 12), surely dabbling with the country’s education policies as was done during the colonial as well as post-colonial eras of the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programmes [See Politics and Pan-Africanism: Diplomacy, Regional Economies and Peace-Building in Contemporary Africa: Dawn Nagar: I.B. Tauris (bloomsbury.com)2022], surely, Trump is revisiting a neo-colonial and neo-mercantilist and capitalist agenda: which will be breeding education poverty. Surely if we (South Africa) and the rest of Africa have the world’s largest mineral wealth take for example cellphones and green renewable energy and AI technology experts and yet we house the world’s most poor of the poor states – surely we need to revisit our implementation policies and strategies and start working together as a continent – and address for example boosting value-add industrialisation and using education technocrats with skills in green hydrogen, EVs, smart agro-ecological practices that can tackle issues of climate change practically. (Figure 1 above , Al Jazeera, “Smartphones notably showing Africa’s resources in the making”).

We must remind President Trump that we are not like a lazy person – like a stone lying in the mud and who picks it up must wash their hands again – we know how to change lives. 

Trump is fearful: Trump is fearful of the prediction that by year 2030, 375 million jobs worldwide will be at risk (See <19 Statistics About Jobs Lost to Automation in 2023 (techjury.net)>; for example the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 report predicts that even the world’s largest economy – the United States could experience 73 million jobs losses due to automation parts critical for job production (See also <The jobs most likely to be lost and created because of AI | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)>].

If Trump is smart, he should be joining hands with South Africa since we have the critical component necessary to make semi-conductors vital for the automation electrical vehicle industry. 

These issues are fast becoming a trade war between superpowers such as China and the European Union with regard to Electrical Vehicles and China’s “perceived” glut in the market according to the US in this area. Europe on the other hand is threatening escalation in import customs and excise duties on China’s EVs. (See Mitchell Labiak, “China and EU to hold talks on electric car tariffs,” British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 24, June 2024, <China and European Union to hold talks on electric car tariffs (bbc.com); See also <Germanium, gallium: China hits back in the chip war with export curbs on key raw materials | CNN Business> < China melting its leverage: will UJ run out of gallium? | Cybernews> see also <The occurrence of germanium in South African coal and derived products | Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (journals.co.za)>.

With the major chip component metals coming from China’s coal – similarly South Africa is not lagging on the coal products – so it has a win-win scenario – coal for semi-conductors as well as coal to burn its outdated power stations – dependant on workable initiatives between South Africa and the Global South. However doing so through green renewable energy initiatives are important (see for example, details about UJ’s Engineering Scientist And Renewable Energy Doyen Professor Pathmanathan Naidoo <Pathmanathan Naidoo - IEEE Xplore Author Profile>; and Physics Scientist and Nuclear Specialist Professor Simon H. Connell <An Optical Analysis of Radiation-Induced Damage in Nuclear Reactor Optical Fibres — University of Johannesburg (uj.ac.za)>.

As Minister Gwede Mantashe reminds the world, that we are open for business for those who want to engage us as a country. The South African President Ramaphosa is also of sober-mind and knows too well – “He who teaches a fool, is as one who glues the broken pieces of a pot together, or as he who rouses a man besotted with sleep”; “He who converses with a fool, talks to one who sleeps; when he is finished the fool will ask: ‘What did you say?’ Shed tears for a dead man, since he has left the light behind; shed tears for a fool, since has left his wits behind” (The Holy Bible, Apocrypha Jesus Sirach or Ecclesiasticus chapter 22: verses 7–10). 

* Dr. Dawn Isabel Nagar, Academic Political Scientist and International Relations Specialist (Proposal Writer, University of Johannesburg, South Africa) (these views are entirely those of the author and not of the University).

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.