South Africa’s new special envoy to the United States is already under scrutiny for calling U.S. President Donald Trump a racist, homophobic and narcissistic “right-winger” in a speech in 2020.
Mcebisi Jonas, a former deputy finance minister, was appointed Monday by President Cyril Ramaphosa as his representative to Washington, tasked with rebuilding South Africa’s deteriorating relationship with the U.S. under Trump.
The Trump administration expelled the South African ambassador last month.
Trump has singled out South Africa, issuing an executive order in February suspending all U.S. funding to the country over what he claimed were its anti-white and anti-American policies.
South Africa’s ambassador was expelled from the U.S. for saying during a webinar that the politics of Trump and the Make America Great Again movement were partly the result of a “supremacist instinct.”
The Trump administration called the ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, a “race-baiting politician” who hated Trump. South Africa hasn’t named a new ambassador.
The new South African envoy’s speech criticising Trump and his first term was delivered on Nov. 8, 2020, five days after the election, in which Joe Biden defeated Trump. His comments have been circulated in the media.
“Right now, the U.S. is undergoing a watershed moment, with Biden the certain winner in the presidential race against the racist, homophobic Donald Trump,” Jonas said. “How we got to a situation where a narcissistic right-winger took charge of the world’s greatest economic and military powerhouse is something that we need to ponder over. It is something that all democracies need to ponder over.”
Jonas was delivering South Africa’s annual Ahmed Kathrada Lecture, where public figures are invited to give a speech for the foundation of Kathrada, one of the anti-apartheid activists put on trial by the white minority government in the 1960s and imprisoned alongside Nelson Mandela.
Jonas’s speech largely focused on inequality, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and promoting the ideas of globalism and international trade. “Hopefully, the defeat of Trump will deal a blow to the deglobalization lobby,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from him or the government over those remarks. After he was appointed, Jonas said he would do his best to “promote a healthy working relationship” between the countries but was aware of the “difficulties that lie ahead, considering recent global developments.”
South Africa has been a prime target for Trump’s criticism.
He has falsely accused the South African government of allowing violent attacks on white minority farmers and seizing their land, claims that have been rejected by political parties across the spectrum and experts in South Africa.
A new land expropriation law does allow the government to expropriate some land without compensation as long as it’s in the public interest. No land has been taken under it. But its passing led groups representing some of South Africa’s white minority to lobby the Trump administration for help, saying their land was likely to be targeted.
Trump has also announced a program offering white South African farmers refugee status in the U.S.
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