As a white man from South Africa now lives in the United States, he fully realized the huge role that Elon Musk played and a few white men with strong relationships in South Africa in the United States Lurch towards tyranny. These include advanced technical billionaires, Peter Thil, who spent training years of his childhood in the apartheid South Africa; US President Donald Trump, “Amnesty International”, “Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Tsar”; Joel Pollac, conservative political commentator in South Africa, is currently working as a great editor in Breitbart News.

Although I am not a billionaire and I have no effect on government policy, these men still have a large number of common denominators. I was born in the apartheid in South Africa at the same time as muskPollak and sacks and benefited from the system. Like them, She finally immigrated to the United States. Like Musk, I went to Veldskool, or “Field School”-a week-long camp during high school, during which teachers tried to teach us to Christian nationalism, the egg ideology only for the apartheid government. Likewise, I was a Nerdy boy who was intimidated at school.

However, I am also completely different from these men – not only because I do not have billions of billions in the bank or a direct line for the American president. Unlike Musk, I do not support false, racist sciences. Unlike musk and management that these men serve, I wonder about the policies of the apartheid era that allowed a small minority-South Africa whitening-by controlling an impatient amount of land and resources. More importantly, I am proud of the post -apartheid achievements in South Africa.

In the early nineties of the last century when South Africa was moving from apartheid to democracy, I was working as a radio journalist in the country’s national broadcaster. I remember that I felt proud and solutions throughout the country as South Africa lined up from all races and backgrounds to vote on April 27, 1994, in the first democratic elections. During the next few years, I and my colleagues were part of the efforts made to convert the Broadcasting Corporation in South Africa from the mouthpiece of the government into a real public broadcaster.

With South Africa winning fighting for democracy, they faced another battle, this time against AIDS. Again, the country rose, and its people to challenge. Millions of South Africa have organized and moved to the streets to order and achieve access to anti -virus drugs in the end. After uncompromising pressure, the government agreed to abide by treatment. The United States government also did the right thing and agreed to finance drug therapy in the country through the US Emergency Emergency Plan PEPFAR. It was South Africa One of the largest beneficiaries of Aid PepfarHe received $ 332.6 million in 2024. This aid saved countless South Africa.

Now, there is no doubt about full support from his nostalgia billionaire friends to the miserable days of apartheid, Trump has reduced this financing. The discounts in the treatment of AIDS with the recent Trump’s executive orders that stopped US aid to South Africa and provide support and asylum to whitening South Africa who were described as “victims of non -fair racial discrimination.” Later, the Trump administration also decided to expel the South African ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool.

Trump follows the progress of musk in the brand after the apartheid in South Africa, a country full of racial discrimination. Musk previously described his mother as “racist property laws” and accused her government of not stopping what he calls “genocide” against white farmers.

What musk and Trump describe are not like the country that I know and love.

My husband and I in South Africa moved to the United States in 2010 because I offered an opportunity to play a role in supporting public health activists at the international level through a job in open community institutions in New York.

We decided that this was a very exciting opportunity to reject – but moving to the United States from South Africa was not an easy decision. We have had a very comfortable life, and the move to the United States was already meant the loss of a number of rights and protection that we had in South Africa, such as protecting good work and paid family leave – as a gay couple – the right to marry. (Gay marriage will not become legal in the country in the United States for another five years.) South Africa also enjoys the right to abortion and constitutional rights to health, education and housing-even if this is far from being a reality in practice.

I became an American citizen in December 2023. It was a sweet time and pass. My father, Malcolm, died a few days ago – and I had to postpone the return home for the memorial until I managed to obtain the permissibility of my new American travel. He was a man of Iman – a minister in the community church – donated his body to science. He is a religious Christian who was loving and supportive when I came out as homosexuals, and even when I told him that I would leave the church, he admired the German -enemy -Nazi facility Dietrich Bunhofer and urged my brothers and I always courageously of our convictions.

Unlike Musk, Thiel, Sacks and Pollak, I have no nostalgia for the apartheid, and if I want to get the courage of my convictions as my father taught me, I feel that I should speak when you call musk Efforts to retreat from the legacy of chapter “racismThe road to cutting the financing of health assistance and international development is ledA small part of the American federal budget), According to experts, it can lead to More than 500,000 deaths In South Africa during the next decade.

I feel I have to speak because Musk and his friends in South Africa born in South Africa -people who have more money than many of us can understand -are now directly with the American President to take everything away from those who have almost nothing.

Their model is not what we should follow. There are much better examples in the past and present. Take Jennifer DavisWho helped formulate constructive links between South Africa and the United States based on human rights and justice. Or many members Change the coalitionAs organizations such as organizations Gap In the United States and Health Justice Initiative In South Africa, who are now cooperating to challenge and reverse Trump discounts. Or millions of people in both countries who appear every day to do the work necessary to make the United States and South Africa better for all their people, regardless of their race, their sexual or banking balance, their motivation and inspiration from the values ​​of democracy, social justice and Obonto – the idea that we all send and are responsible for each other.

Musk and his similar friends now have all the power, but they are just a small minority. People who love justice and democracy in South Africa and the United States have won against their type before, and I am sure they will do it again.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.