At the rate he is going, he is surely a leading contender for our Charmza of the Year, despite it being early days yet. Yes, President Cyril Ramaphosa has indeed charmed us silly as he continues to show evidence of -having developed a backbone that was sadly missing in all his years in office.
He seems to have gained more resolve to stand his ground since enacting the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act despite what could have been viewed as an overly cautious consideration of the concerns of opponents of the law, notably his government of national unity partners.
Building on this commendable new-found fortitude, the president went on to sign into law the Expropriation Act of 2025 to repel the apartheid-era act that had governed such matters since 1975.
It was the coming into force of this piece of legislation that saw South Africans of questionable patriotism rush across the pond to Donald Trump to declare an imaginary land grab by the South African government against white landowners.
Groupings such as the right-wing Afri-Forum have always had a sympathetic ear in Trump, and would surely have been delighted with his return to the White House. It would, for them have been a timely second coming as Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act
into law a matter of weeks after Trump’s re-election for his second non-consecutive term as president of the US.
Among a raft of executive orders Trump signed on his return to the Oval Office was the suspension of humanitarian aid to South Africa on the false premise that our government was enacting racist laws on land ownership and ill-treating “a certain class of people”.
Trump followed his ill-informed action with the announcement that the US was ready to accept as refugees Afrikaners fleeing their persecution in South Africa – imagined as it is. What initially sounded like a triumph for those peddling the lie of land grabs was soon to turn into an embarrassment as the chickens began coming home to roost.
Then white, and presumably Afrikaner, compatriots took to social media and many other platforms to voice their displeasure at the misrepresentation of facts for obvious mischief by the peddlers of the lies to Trump. The veneer of the not-so-carefully packaged lies was starting to wear thin and it was backfiring.
It was in this context that AfriForum, that unelected custodian of Afrikaner interests, came back with its tail between the legs and begged for an audience with Ramaphosa over their part in the fiasco.
They had forgotten that they never sought any such indulgence before spreading their propaganda, and now that their scheme was unravelling, they felt the need to have a word with the president.
It presented another opportunity for Mahlamba Ndlopfu to show such people the proverbial middle finger in no uncertain terms. The Presidency told the right-wingers it was not going to entertain them, and dismissed their request with the contempt it deserved.
Bravo to the president. Long may he tread this path. For far too long South Africa has been run on the fears of a “certain class of people” rather than the dreams and aspirations of all its people.
