SAFTU condemns Donald Trump’s claims on Africa, calling them racist, imperialist, and a threat to global working-class solidarity. Picture Credits: EngineeringNews
By Thulane Madalane
Johanessburg – The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) has unequivocally condemned the reckless, imperialist, and deeply racist statements and actions of former and current US President Donald Trump, particularly his recent claims that he has “brought peace” between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and his arrogant assertion that African countries “want him to come and take their minerals.” These assertions are not only factually false but also reveal the true nature of modern imperialism: the open justification of plunder, domination, and exploitation of the Global South by a tiny global elite of billionaires.
The crisis in the eastern DRC cannot be attributed to African failure or chaos, as Trump suggests. Instead, it is the result of decades of imperialist intervention, proxy wars, corporate extraction, arms trafficking, and geopolitical manipulation, in which Western governments and multinational corporations have played a central role. To claim credit for “peace” while openly coveting Africa’s minerals is an insult to the African people and a continuation of colonial logic that reduces Africa to merely a warehouse of resources rather than a continent of sovereign peoples.
SAFTU rejects the myth that Donald Trump is a challenger to the elites. He is not anti-establishment but rather the political expression of oligarchy—a system of rule by and for a tiny minority of billionaires controlling capital, technology, arms, energy, and finance. Under the banner of “America First,” Trump has advanced massive tax giveaways to corporations and the ultra-rich, deregulation benefiting fossil fuel, arms, and surveillance industries, expanded militarization and threats of war, and the scapegoating of migrants and the poor to divide the working class. Since Trump’s return to power, his billionaire allies in Big Tech, oil and gas, arms manufacturing, private equity, and surveillance have accumulated tens of billions of dollars, while workers face rising living costs, job insecurity, and deepening inequality. This is not nationalism; it is corporate empire wrapped in a flag.
Trump’s open threats against the Gaza Strip, his backing of Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people, and his crude calls to forcibly displace Palestinians reveal the violent core of imperialism. SAFTU also condemns the imperialist destabilization of Sudan, where war is fueled by foreign interests seeking control over gold, trade routes, and strategic military positioning; renewed threats and sanctions against Venezuela, aimed at punishing a country for asserting sovereignty over its oil resources; and the decades-long blockade of Cuba, imposed not because Cuba failed, but because it demonstrated that human development is possible outside capitalist exploitation. Sanctions, blockades, and regime change operations are not diplomatic tools but economic warfare that punish working people and undermine national sovereignty.
Trump’s posture must be understood within the historical context of US-led imperialism, which has orchestrated or supported coups and destabilization across the world—from the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo to interventions in Chile, Iran, Haiti, Libya, Bolivia, and beyond. Coups are not accidents; they are instruments of imperial policy used when countries refuse to submit to corporate and geopolitical interests.
SAFTU further warns South Africans not to be deceived by Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric. Xenophobia does not challenge exploitation; it protects it. By blaming migrants and foreigners for social crises created by capitalism, imperialism diverts anger away from billionaires and corporations and turns workers against one another. This politics serves the interests of empire, not the working class.
Echoing these sentiments, SAFTU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi stated, “Trump represents not peace, but plunder. Not democracy, but oligarchic rule. Not sovereignty, but imperial arrogance. The working class of South Africa has no interest in aligning with billionaires, war profiteers, and imperial projects masquerading as ‘nationalism.’ Another world is not only possible, it is necessary.”
SAFTU reaffirms its commitment to anti-imperialism and international working-class solidarity, Pan-Africanism and African sovereignty, opposition to war, occupation and resource plunder, and rejection of xenophobia, racism, and nationalism that divide workers. It stands in solidarity with the peoples of the DRC, Sudan, Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba, and all nations resisting imperial domination.
