SA prof’s scathing clap-back to Trump tweets

Political analyst, columnist and academic professor Steven Friedman wrote a Facebook post on Thursday, satirically calling on president Cyril Ramaphosa to order minister of international relations Lindiwe Sisulu to investigate the United States of America.

The post is a response to Trump’s tweets this morning, in which he detailed his commitment to probing the land issue in South Africa.

In response, the professor listed  information showing that the US are perhaps not in the best position to cast judgement on other countries.

This is the professor’s post in its entirety:

“In the light of activity on Twitter over night it has become urgently necessary for the President to order the Minister of International Relations to investigate the United States of America. The investigation should focus on these facts:

• Its current President was elected despite losing the popular vote to his opponent by 3 million votes;
• Despite representing a minority, he and his party control the executive, legislature and judiciary;
• In many states of the US, laws and rules exclude many poor people and members of racial minorities from exercising their right to vote
• The boundaries of electoral districts are routinely drawn to give the current President’s party an unfair advantage
• The US has been holding prisoners without trial for 17 years
• Its current president is committed to violating the right of people to travel simply because of their religion or race
• In 2000, the US election was settled in a state in which the voting machines were faulty and the winning candidate’s brother was the Governor. Despite this, a Supreme Court, most of whose judges were appointed by the winner’s party, upheld the result
• All this must surely mean that the US is currently subjected to minority rule, its government violates people’s rights without due process of law and it is therefore not a democracy. Our government and those of other democracies are surely obliged to come to the aid of Americans living under minority rule and to restore democracy to that country as soon as possible”

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