If US 47th President Donald Trump has a heart, the choice of January 20, 2025, as the date of his inauguration has not increased the mistaken impression that his heart is in the right place.
The third Monday of January is a federal holiday to honour the life and legacy of esteemed Black civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The Nobel prize recipient was just 39 years old when he was killed. Looking back at the issue-driven life of the man, till the day of his assassination 57 years ago, King has been dead longer than he lived. Shot with a high-powered rifle in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, attempts to resuscitate him at a nearby hospital were unsuccessful.
If the cause that King represented meant nothing to Trump, what was on his mind to have chosen Martin Luther King Day for his inauguration? Was it to lift the memory of the man that Black Consciousness music icon Nina Simone called ‘the king of love’? Or, was it to eclipse the cause for which Dr King lived and died for?
King lies in the silent heart of the earth to speak no more. Trump is still alive and kicking to answer for himself. If the burden of justice that King shouldered holds any weight of significance for Trump to associate his inauguration with, then why did Afriforum’s bad mouthing of the unfinished business of the liberation project, to deliver the majority of struggling people from oppressive subordination, not sound outlandish in his ears to believe claims of there being a white genocide in South Africa?
What was in King’s lifetime in the United States that would have Trump believe holds no water in common cause with the plight of black people in this southern-most tip of the continent of Africa? This is a part of the continent where white people, running away from the liberation struggles for independence from countries to the west, north and east of South Africa, came to. The rush southward to South Africa was not motivated by a desire to reach for the promise of freedom. The escape from other liberation-seeking African countries was premised on the belief that here, in South Africa, the invincibility of white privilege to invest their white numbers was rock solid to run for.
The express intent and purpose of attraction, to dash for South Africa, was not for the good of humanity or the public good. South Africa held the promise that white privilege would last forever. They boasted of walking in skins that would have them lord over children of a lesser god – black people. To haters of liberation, South Africa was presented as the sun of white privilege to continue basking in for warmth that racism never fails to exude. It is the belated changes that the ANC is attempting to ring that are driving white privilege to scramble for Trump’s ear, and various US offices, to inundate with false claims of being treated badly.
But if Trump has a heart, his ear can ill afford to turn deaf to words of King, whose remembrance he marked by his inauguration on January 20, 2025: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The message that King was conveying is that although progress towards justice is slow, it is inevitable. It is this inevitability of justice that Trump is invited to turn a deaf ear to.
This inevitability of justice, as a measurement for progress, is best illustrated by Malcolm X’s reference to a stab wound: “If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they won’t even admit the knife is there.” – Malcolm X. The onus is on Trump to abide by this deniability of the inevitability of justice. Friday, March 28, 2025. – @News_Online