Old certainties are crumbling fast written by MARIUS ROODT

[Nat Quinn]

Old certainties are crumbling fast written by MARIUS ROODT

The world seems to be a chaotic place at the moment.

President Donald Trump has wasted little time in upending much of what the world had come to take for granted. He has implemented tariffs on close allies, and his talk about potential American territorial expansion should be taken at least somewhat seriously.

Whatever emerges from Trump’s rhetoric and moves to impose tariffs on allies, it’s clear that the post-World War II consensus is on its last legs, if it’s not already dead.

At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are gathering speed. Just last week there was talk of AI having its “Sputnik” moment with the unveiling of the Chinese-developed programme, DeepSeek. It had reportedly been built and trained for a fraction of the cost of American AI programmes. The “Sputnik” moment is because its development took the US by surprise, just as the launch of the first artificial satellite in space by the Soviet Union in the 1950s – Sputnik – blindsided the Russians’ American rivals.

It is still unclear what effect AI will have on the global economy in the next few decades, but it’s likely to be as paradigm-changing as inventions such as the Internet, the telephone, or Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press.

Taboo

But there is another change under way which is likely to affect South Africa more in the near term than the rise of AI; potentially the end of the taboo around changing post-colonial African borders.

This comes as Rwanda, led by strongman Paul Kagame, increasingly looks set to occupy the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The African Great Lakes has been one of the world’s most unstable regions for the past 30 years, with Rwanda often being the culprit in stoking instability, at huge human and economic cost.

The eastern DRC has been part of Rwanda’s sphere of influence for some time now, with Kigali effectively acting as an extractive coloniser. It is believed that Rwanda and its proxy forces have seized a number of mineral-rich areas in the eastern DRC, with Kigali benefiting from this. Rwanda, despite having very few mineral resources of its own, has somehow become one of the major exporters of coltan and other rare earth minerals, which it has clearly extracted from the eastern DRC.

Now, something that would have seemed absurd only a few years ago could become reality – a formal annexation of parts of the DRC by Rwanda.

Greater Rwanda

While some would say that this is the stuff of fantasy and will never happen, Rwandan elites, Kagame among them, reportedly dream of a “Greater Rwanda,” which would include much of what is now the eastern DRC (the fact that it is one of the most mineral-rich parts of the planet also helps explain some of those ambitions). Many in Kigali reportedly view borders imposed by European colonial powers as anachronisms which need to be done away with.

Kagame and Kigali’s ambitions have seen them clash with peacekeepers from a number of African countries, including South Africa. In a battle last week between Rwanda, its proxy forces, and South African and other peacekeepers, fourteen South African soldiers were killed. At the time of writing the remaining South Africans are confined to their base by the Rwandans and their allies and, while reportedly being treated well, there are concerns that they could soon begin running out of supplies.

While Rwanda still refuses to admit that it is effectively occupying the eastern DRC, it is an open secret that this is the case. Much of the region is now effectively governed from Kigali. And the possibility of Kigali formally annexing some of the DRC cannot be ruled out.

Old rules

While it would draw some global condemnation, many of the old rules – particularly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine – have been thrown out of the window. At the same time, Donald Trump’s upending many of the old certainties could also see taboos such as the one around post-colonial African borders also change.

Wars over territory seemed to be a thing of the past, but they could re-emerge as these old taboos crumble. Something that was once unthinkable – say Namibia and Botswana going to war over the Caprivi Strip or Zambia and the DRC over their border dispute, are no longer the domain of wargamers or science-fiction fans, but something that can’t be dismissed out of hand.

This is an important lesson. Just because things have been a certain way before does not mean that they will not change in the future. And as the saying goes, history may not repeat but it often rhymes.

The current tensions between the US and Canada seem strange to most people living in the modern era, but historically these two countries have often been at loggerheads, with both countries believing as late as the 1930s that a war between them was possible. And free trade between the US and Canada is a fairly new phenomenon, only having been implemented to any large degree in the 1980s.

The world could be reverting to type in other ways, where might makes right. We have seen this in what is happening in central Africa as well as in Putin’s war of conquest and aggression against Ukraine. But let’s not forget that a Europe at peace is also a fairly uncommon phenomenon. Even after World War II, the possibility of an eventual Soviet invasion of Western Europe was something that many analysts believed possible, even likely.

Which brings us to our final point – don’t believe that because, in South Africa, the unthinkable has not happened in the past 30 years that it can’t ever happen. Throughout the country’s history, many South Africans were victims of a rapacious government which treated them poorly, making them poorer and taking away their property. One must not think that this current government would never repeat the mistakes of past governments in seizing property and condemning South Africans to lives of penury and hopelessness.

Things are uncertain in the world now, as well as in this country and continent. We may well look back on the first few decades of this century as something of a golden age, when might normally wasn’t right.

 

SOURCE:Old certainties are crumbling fast – Daily Friend

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