When former US president Barack Obama visited South Africa in 2013, he was greeted with hostility from some local quarters so serious that security had to be maximised around him.
His visit to the Soweto campus of the University of Johannesburg had to be so carefully arranged and conducted that many of those wishing to get close to him – both fans and foes – could only catch glimpses of his motorcade whisking by.
Asked what the former anti-apartheid campaigner who is a big fan of the late Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and former president Nelson Mandela had done to deserve such hostility, many "No-bama" protesters raised the contentious US foreign policy and the superpower’s destabilising interference around the globe. At the time, the key emotive issue was the toppling of Libya’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and the age-old Israel-Palestine conundrum.
It’s amazing – and saddening too – how the more things change, the more they stay the same. But at least back then, our president was still able to host his counterpart and have a civil, fruitful conversation.
Former president Jacob Zuma didn’t shy away from the US foreign policy hot potato, but spoke about it diplomatically and also used the opportunity to talk about matters of common interest, especially trade.
The general complaint about Obama from locals was that, while he was the first black US president, he “was no different to other US presidents” before him.
Now we have a very different US president, for sure in Donald Trump. Now, instead of US presidential visits, we are regularly getting visitations of wrath from the White House.
The dogs of war have been let slip and soon the billionaire oligarchs will be crying ‘havoc!’ and looking for the spoils during the global meltdown already underway. But when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
It’s good that economic giants like China and the European Union are fighting back. But I shudder to think what will become of poor nations like South Africa and Lesotho that are the proverbial grass of the world as these elephants continue fighting.