Up the Golan Heights on the way to the UN-controlled demilitarised zone that separates Israel and Syria is a small rural village that has been renamed Trump Heights.
As the name suggests, it is in honour of controversial US President Donald Trump, the man whose actions since returning to office some four months ago have been so disruptive to the global economy that there is now consensus among economists that the world is headed for a recession.
The locals of this little village — not far from the river Jordan which, according to the Bible, is where Jesus Christ was baptised by John the Baptist — renamed the area during Trump’s first stint as US president.
This was after Trump went against international norms and moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as an affirmation of his contentious decision to recognise the latter as the capital of Israel.
Jerusalem, of course, is at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with both sides claiming “the Holy City” as their capital.
Trump had also made the village and the rest of Israel happy, saying his administration recognised the Golan Heights as part of the Jewish state despite the fact that, prior to the war between the two countries in 1968, it was part of Syria.
The gesture of naming the village after Trump reflects just how popular the US president is, especially with the Israeli right-wing. He is seen in that country as a “friend of Israel” in a world dominated by that country’s critiques.
Since returning to power, Trump has continued with his pro-Israeli stance — even going as far as to outrageously suggest that the solution to the ongoing Israeli mass bombings of Gaza would be to clear the region of its Palestinian population and turning it into a tourist city. The suggestion has not gone down well with the Palestinians and the rest of the world.
Are we in the right shape for the dangerous and uncertain era the world is entering?
Yet despite this love affair between Trump and the Israeli, the state of Israel hasn’t escaped the punitive trade tariffs imposed by Trump on a series of countries, including our own, around the world. The US president hit Israeli imports into his country with 17% increase, although not as high as those imposed on China, SA, Lesotho and others, a move that must have surprised Tel Aviv.
This goes to show that, contrary to what some in SA would like us to believe, a country’s geopolitical posture had very little to do in Trump’s consideration of what tariffs he imposed on their goods.
Instead, the US president’s main preoccupation is the US economy. He is of the misguided opinion that he will reposition the American economy as the most industrialised nation in the world and create manufacturing jobs for his population by “protecting” US goods from foreign imports — whether they are from friends or foes.
All of this has suddenly turned the world into an uncertain place. It is hard for anyone to predict what happens next and where the world economy will be six months from now.
We are in a dangerous era, one that demands absolute vigilance and clear strategies of navigating an uncertain world. Countries like Canada, who were among the first to be targeted by Trump, are showing us the way of surviving the onslaught.
In the face of US aggression, which included Trump pejoratively referring to that country as his country’s 51st state and calling its prime minister a “governor”, Canada has spoken in one voice — pushing back against US tariffs.
This they did even though their country was going through election season — a period that is usually characterised by political parties trying to score cheap political points off each other.
This raises a question about SA. Are we in the right shape for the dangerous and uncertain era the world is entering? Often we seem too obsessed with our internal feuds that we are blinded to the dangers we face from outside.
At a political level, we have attracted unwanted attention from Trump due primarily to a misinformation campaign by the likes of AfriForum and Solidarity who have been painting the country’s efforts to correct the injustices of the past as measures to punish the white Afrikaans minority.
But even without this propaganda, the South African economy was always going to be endangered by Trump’s return to power as we are among countries who produce and export goods the US president would prefer are produced in his country.
Given all of that, you would think that our country’s, especially our government’s, preoccupation would be how to respond to this danger. But if our cabinet is made up of people who can’t even find common ground on the budget vote, can they agree on a coherent strategy to respond to Trump?
It is unlikely.
That is why one believes that maybe it is not a bad idea to let the current make-up of the government of national unity to collapse and let a government made up of the like-minded to lead the coming battle.
SowetanLIVE
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