Your Stance on Afrikaners and Trump is Wrong

To the Editor,

I’ve been following your launch of The Common Sense and the accompanying podcast series, and I must say the platform has begun with impressive momentum. Gabriel Makin, in particular, is clearly a sharp mind with a rigorous academic background.

That said, I want to offer a candid response to your latest analysis, because it strikes me as fundamentally misaligned with the actual political mood in South Africa. Your argument that the United States (US) is in danger of “losing” South Africa – and the Afrikaner community – because Washington has supposedly misunderstood our electorate’s values and instincts feels like the wrong inference drawn from the wrong data. Suggesting that the US should overhaul its entire strategy to mirror broader South African sentiment risks obscuring what is really happening.

From where I sit, this moment is being misread. The public mood – particularly among Afrikaners – is one of deep anger toward the African National Congress (ANC) and Cyril Ramaphosa. AfriSol has spent the past year meticulously documenting how the ANC has consistently defied and antagonised the US, not just recently but over many years. Figures like Rob Hersov have further crystallised this sentiment: that there must eventually be consequences for those responsible, including senior ANC members and aligned individuals like Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu. This is not a scenario in which America is “losing” South Africa; it is one in which the ANC is overplaying its hand and may soon face the repercussions of that.

I cannot shake the sense that your reading is influenced, at least indirectly, by the difficult position of the Democratic Alliance (DA) within the government of national unity, where its cabinet ministers are now compelled to echo government messaging on the US–South Africa standoff. But this is politically dangerous.

It puts the DA in a posture of deference to the ANC – precisely the syndrome that obliterated the LibDems after they entered coalition with the Tories in Britain in 2010. Also, the misreading of general sentiment among Afrikaners is reminiscent of Mmusi Maimane's Schweizer-Reneke debacle.

The DA should not drift into becoming an ANC-lite echo chamber. It would be far stronger to state plainly that the ANC has acted recklessly in provoking the US, especially when Washington is asking for nothing unreasonable – modernising racial legislation, easing barriers to trade, and ceasing South Africa’s indulgence of regimes like Iran and Russia, etc. Clarity on these matters is not only morally sound; it is strategically essential.

I offer this in the spirit of intellectual honesty and respect for the importance of the work you’re doing. South Africa needs clear-eyed analysis, and the stakes are too high for anything less.

Dewald Lochner