MICHAEL MORRIS: Ramaphosa should focus on the US and its emergent nationalist renewal - Business Day

Michael Morris

The Trump administration’s somewhat quixotic “refugee” intervention in SA’s affairs doubtless lends itself to ridicule — at a time, though, when ridicule is not only ill-advised but risks trivialising the country’s grave problems, and pretending we can live with them and go on as we are.

Bemused South Africans — which is most of us — do have a genuine sense of the vulnerability of rural communities in general, and of the relatively small community of commercial farmers in particular (increasing numbers of whom, it is seldom noted, are not white and not Afrikaans-speaking, and are no less vulnerable).

To the greater farming community, we owe gratitude for the well-stocked grocery shelves that most of us take for granted — and, lest we forget, its contribution to the economy. As Stats SA said of the third and fourth quarters of 2024: “The agriculture industry was the largest positive contributor, increasing by 17.2% and contributing 0.4 of a percentage point to the positive GDP growth.”

But few South Africans labour under any illusions about where the greatest crime risks lie, and why.

According to the latest SA Police Service crime stats covering October to December 2024, violent crime is highest in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, which coincide with the country’s major metros and its highest population densities.

Ranked by their murder rates, the Eastern Cape is by far the most violent province, with 19.6 murders per 100,000 people, followed by the Western Cape (16.0), KwaZulu-Natal (12.6) and Gauteng (10.3).

In February, police minister Senzo Mchunu pointed out that “four of the nine provinces recorded increases in murder cases, with the highest increase recorded in the Western Cape, followed by North West, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo”.

He went on: “All the top 30 stations for murder were in ... Western Cape (11 stations), KwaZulu-Natal (8), Eastern Cape (6) and Gauteng (5). The leading stations among them were Nyanga, followed by Inanda, uMlazi, Khayelitsha and Harare.”

Is this a line of reasoning President Cyril Ramaphosa should pursue in his meeting with Donald Trump?

No. To do so would be disastrous, and would actually miss the point ... which is not about SA (or farmers, Afrikaners, white people, justice, crime or history, or caring about any of these things) but the US and the politics of an emergent nationalist renewal (whatever that’s going to turn out to mean).

Because it is going to impinge on all of us, we should all of us hope the best for the Ramaphosa-Trump encounter (and I am not actually averse to the idea of anyone standing up to the kind of bullying we know Trump is capable of).

But let’s not kid ourselves.

As noted above, few are uncertain about where our greatest crime risks lie, and why; SA is where our problems are, and this is where we have to fix them.

Voters “want growth, jobs, and competent government”, as my senior colleague, Institute of Race Relations CEO John Endres, wrote last week. “The ANC is finding itself out of step with public sentiment”, and while there was still time to “change course”, there wasn’t much.

If it failed to govern in a way that “encourages growth, restores trust in public institutions, and unites people around shared goals”, the ANC would “eventually collapse under the weight of its contradictions”.

Ramaphosa needs to keep a sharp focus on this truth — in Washington, of course, but, much more so, at home.

Morris is head of media at the Institute of Race Relations.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2025-05-19-michael-morris-ramaphosa-should-focus-on-the-us-and-its-emergent-nationalist-renewal/