This too shall pass – the only truth wise men have about Trump

THIS past weekend I was driving through the eastern Free State. On the car radio, I listened to the reckless political ordnance that US president Donald Trump was unleashing on the world. By 10 February he had already signed 55 executive orders. Most of the decrees, theatrically signed in the glow of sycophantic media, were declarations of economic war against his country's historical financial and political partners. But his venom was also aimed at the 11 million undocumented workers in the American economy, whom he denounced as criminals.

On 7 February he signed an executive order entitled “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa". I hear the jubilant chorus in right-wing ranks here in South Africa ... at long last they have a messiah who can save the volk from the “mud races”. God sent Trump to deliver the Afrikaners from the tyranny of Panyaza Lesufi, Paul Mashatile and Julius Malema. The treaty that more mainstream Afrikaners had entered into with the ANC in the first half of 2024 has now become a betrayal. 

Race madness

Speaking of “egregious”, I ended up in the eastern Free State having fled Johannesburg. In a bar I listen to drunken men talking loudly, sarcastically, racistically about the “primitive antics” of one Sipho, clearly a representative of all black men. This is AfriForum world, I tell myself. Drunken racism is not exactly a receptive and safe atmosphere for an elderly “atheistic liberal” – if I may quote the description by Solidarity’s Jaco Kleynhans – and I decorate myself as “mysterious and dark”, lonely in the far corner of the bar. It makes sense to avoid eye contact.

This is brewing in my head: AfriForum and Solidarity accuse the ANC of “race madness”, which is Solidarity boss Dirk Hermann’s favourite accusation against black South Africans. The one (far-right) movement in the country that defines itself based on race, ethnicity and language accuses the rest of us of race madness. Bless my sorry soul.

The bar closes and I pull my hat even tighter over my neck and eyes and walk towards a tent where sheep for slaughter are being auctioned. The tables groan under the ladies' culinary skills. The drinking subsides fleetingly for the table prayer.

Someone moves uncertainly in my direction and whispers in my ear, “the farmers want your blood". I send a WhatsApp to my journalist friend Foeta Krige in Johannesburg; his wise advice is, “make it an early evening". It is already pitch dark when I set off towards Ficksburg, where I am to lay down my head.

I rarely play music in my car, but now I do. Bob Dylan laments the fate of the world, the morbidness of his words, and of reality, take possession of me.

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin'
but build to destroy

I lie in the darkness of my humble abode and read social media. Trump's “refugees" shout out about genocide on Facebook and X. They curse my ass when my opinion and name appear somewhere.

I read an open letter to Trump written by the executive chairman of the South African Agricultural Initiative (Saai), Theo de Jager: “We deeply appreciate your Christian, family-based values, which resonate with our constituency." Saai is simply the agricultural branch of AfriForum and De Jager should know as well as I do that farm murders are part of South Africa's crime figures, it's not politics. But he chooses to capitalise by abusing farmers' safety as a political variable in order to advance Afrikaner self-determination.

De Jager, who himself was convicted of two counts of fraud in the Pretoria Magistrate's Court in 1999, views Trump's understanding of religion as typical of the Afrikaner's Christian national values. I have no reason not to take De Jager's word for it – I am neither an Afrikaner nor a Christian, what do I know? But my senses warn me against God's strange friends.

Trump se p ...

In a leaked 2005 video, Trump is recorded bragging about his sexual harassment of women. He says, among other things: “When you’re a star, they let you do anything. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”

My question in a sardonic tone of voice is: “What would Jesus do, Theo?” No one at Solidarity or AfriForum has indicated that Theo misunderstands God, I assume they agree with Theo's opinion of Trump's Christian national values. After all, Trump stated that God had saved him from the evil intentions of 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, his would-be assassin in 2024, so that he could become the president of the US, something De Jager clearly agrees with.

In May 2024, a federal jury in New York found Trump guilty of “sexual abuse and defamation" of columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. The court awarded her $5 million in damages. Trump appealed against the verdict, but in January 2025 a federal appeals court upheld the decision.

Tutu is my kind of Christian

I was hoping God would be on the woman's side, but he is not. I once had hope for De Jager, the avocado farmer from deep, dark Mpumalanga who now kneels level with Trump's loins praying for his people. But maybe God is not a Christian – I remember archbishop Desmond Tutu saying something in this vein. In this hour of need, Tutu is my kind of Christian.

In February 2024, Trump was found guilty by a New York court of large-scale financial fraud. He, his adult sons and several of his former executives were ordered to repay more than $450 million, money that they – like De Jager – had obtained illegally. De Jager's penalty was R5 000. Trump was also banned from serving as an officer or director of any company in New York for three years. Dr Theo de Jager currently serves as president of the convocation of Stellenbosch University.

I turn off the light. Ficksburg is dead quiet. Bob Dylan understands these contradictions better than I do.

You build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Does God blame the woke?

In the darkness, I think of Bill Gates claiming that the lives of up to 20 million people in the world's most destitute countries will be threatened by Trump and Elon Musk's threatening and reckless suspension of USAid's programmes. But does God care? Theo, Jaco, Kallie, does he care? Or, does he also blame the ANC, the Democrats, the woke trash at universities, the race-mad, the liberals, the atheists?

If I understand you correctly, you also think that God was on the side of Israel against the Philistines of Palestine. The thousands of Muslim children who were shot to pieces have left you indifferent, I suspect. But, I wonder, does God have mercy on the Muslims, even if you think they are going straight to hell? You blame the ANC for Trump's resentment and anger, just as you blame Hamas for the massacre in Gaza, if I understand you correctly. I don't know what to make of the how and the where of your blaming, but I'm interested in the opinion of God. (What would Jesus do?)

Kleynhans tells us almost daily about his direct access to officials in the White House. “Jaco, when in Washington, won't you beg for mercy for these defenceless children, on your knees, with your typically phallic approach, assefokkenblief, man!”

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Stand up for the children

TV journalist Debora Patta, who now works for CBS News, spoke to me last week. She has just returned from Sudan. Her accounts of the absolute desperation in that country are emotionally devastating. There, too, as in South Africa, USAid was initially withdrawn and partially restored, but the millions of starving children terrified her.

“How can anyone leave the fate of these children to the recklessness of political warlords and Donald Trump?” This is the bigger picture of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again”, and Kriel and Kleynhans’ insistence on a special dispensation for Afrikaners.

Instead of standing up for these children, AfriForum and Solidarity are fanning the flames. Or, as they say in English, “they double down”. Following a typically ideological newsletter from the ANC on X, Kleynhans writes on the platform: “It is time for sanctions against these ANC leaders. The level of racism in this formal ANC statement is dangerous.”

And then, with undisguised hubris, almost like when Trump gives orders: “I will ask the American government to look into this letter and act accordingly.” How did it happen that a mind as godless as Kleynhans's could give orders to the American government?

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

And on Netwerk24, the Afrikaners of Solidarity and AfriForum invite Trump to ruthlessly and blatantly come down on the South African economy: “Solidarity calls on President Donald Trump of America to continue his pressure on South Africa until the country's racial laws are removed.” I am quoted on the same media platform where I blame the ANC for the violence and poverty under which so many black South Africans have to live, while AfriForum, Solidarity and Trump are twisting the knife in the wounds of the most vulnerable among the vulnerable.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

God weet, só kan dit nie aangaan nie

As my grandmother would have said, God knows, it cannot continue like this. Somewhere the bigots in South Africa and the plutocrats in America must be brought to account for these wicked instincts. Their conceit and ruthlessness are eating away at the fabric of our humanity.

One of the oldest references to the saying “This too shall pass” comes from Persian literature. Apparently, it is a Sufi wisdom attributed to Attar of Nishapur, a 12th-century poet and philosopher. According to legend, a Persian king asked his wise men to create a short, powerful expression that would always and under all circumstances be true. The wise men, after mature reflection, came up with: “This too shall pass."

But the expression also has a prominent place in American history. In a speech in 1859, Abraham Lincoln told an Oriental story about a king who was searching for timeless wisdom, true under all circumstances. He too came up with “This too shall pass." Lincoln quoted the saying to remind Americans of the transience of things, especially in the run-up to the American Civil War (1861–1865). He used the phrase to offer comfort and perspective in difficult times.

Humanity is better than Trump and his supporters here in South Africa: “This too shall pass."

If Trump goes to the afterlife before me, I will fly to America for his funeral, just to make sure.

And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Mooi loop, Suid-Afrika.

♦ VWB ♦

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