Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: US lawmakers have called on Nigeria to repeal sharia lag
Speaker 2: in the country's north as they probe US President Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's unfounded allegations of Christian persecution in the country.
Speaker 3: They're killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria and they
Speaker 3: have other countries very bad also. You know that that
Speaker 3: part of the world very bad and killing the Christians
Speaker 3: and killing them in very large numbers.
Speaker 4: We're not going to allow that to happen.
Speaker 2: This follows previous unfounded claims from the US administration of
Speaker 2: a white genocide in South Africa, with thousands.
Speaker 5: Of stories talking about it. Surely we have documentaries, we
Speaker 5: have news stores. I could show you a couple of things,
Speaker 5: and I would. I just I have to it has
Speaker 5: to be responded to.
Speaker 2: On today's podcast, we'll look at how Nigeria, Christians and
Speaker 2: white South Africans have become a pretty big issue in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. And what impact it's having on US Africa relations.
Speaker 2: I'm Jennifer's Abisaja and this is the Next Africa Podcast,
Speaker 2: bringing you one story each week from the continent driving
Speaker 2: the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg
Speaker 2: can provide. Now, joining us today is our deputy Managing
Speaker 2: editor for the Middle East and Africa, that's Neil Munshi,
Speaker 2: and also our South Africa government reporter that is Sembile Stele,
Speaker 2: who both of them have been covering this extensively. So
Speaker 2: thank you both for joining us this week. Neil, maybe
Speaker 2: we just start with you if we take a look
Speaker 2: at what the US Congress committee was investigating, was intended
Speaker 2: on investigating, how did we get to this point? Give
Speaker 2: us a few of the steps into how we got here.
Speaker 1: So, the idea that Christians have been persecuted in Nigeria
Speaker 1: has been floating around evangelical circles, especially in the US,
Speaker 1: for many years. It goes back to Trump's first term
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, there is also within the Nigerian
Speaker 1: Christian community some agitation about this, that Christians are being
Speaker 1: persecuted in the country, et cetera. And it's been picked
Speaker 1: up by members of the Trump coalition and made its
Speaker 1: way to the President's desk at some point. I think
Speaker 1: the background here is important because Nigeria has an incredibly
Speaker 1: bad problem with insecurity across the country, and just to
Speaker 1: put it in context, Nigeria is about two hundred and
Speaker 1: some million people, roughly split between Christians and Muslims. Christians
Speaker 1: mostly live in the South, Muslims mostly live in the North.
Speaker 1: Everyone in Nigeria, regardless of faith, is a victim of insecurity, terrorism,
Speaker 1: armed gangs of bandits, communal violence, you name it, and
Speaker 1: it tends not to be religiously denominated. That's kind of
Speaker 1: the context here.
Speaker 2: Right, And we should probably say, you spent quite a
Speaker 2: lot of time living in the country. Can you talk
Speaker 2: about maybe what the reaction from what you know has
Speaker 2: been from Nigerians to this whole entire spotlight from the
Speaker 2: US administration being on the country in this way.
Speaker 1: When you hear from ordinary Nigerians, it would be we
Speaker 1: have an incredibly bad insecurity problem, and it is an issue.
Speaker 1: But it's not government persecution of Christians. It's not even
Speaker 1: that Christians are disproportionately victims of crime or murder or attacks.
Speaker 1: It's that the government, successive governments going back fifteen twenty
Speaker 1: years have done very little to nothing to address the
Speaker 1: insecurity problem that swallowed the country. This includes kidnapping for ransom,
Speaker 1: you know, arm bandits on motorcycles with AK forty seven.
Speaker 4: Listeners might have heard of from Boko.
Speaker 1: Haram and affiliated groups that are mostly in the northeast
Speaker 1: of the country and mostly impact the Muslims who mainly
Speaker 1: live up there.
Speaker 2: Tim BILLI can you jump in here, because if we
Speaker 2: think about some of the allegations that we've heard from
Speaker 2: President Trump, it's been quite different in South Africa, but
Speaker 2: of course we do want to talk about the ways
Speaker 2: in which he is still targeting some African countries. Last
Speaker 2: year we spoke about South Africa and President Trump. What
Speaker 2: impact have his most recent allegations had here in the
Speaker 2: country if we talk about ordinary South Africans and even
Speaker 2: the South African administration.
Speaker 6: So I would say maybe just to pick up on
Speaker 6: Neil's point, is that what South Africa has undatedly been
Speaker 6: battling to deal with for the longest time, and even
Speaker 6: the president he conceded us right when President Sirama Posa
Speaker 6: met with President Trump on the Oval Office last year,
Speaker 6: is that South Africa's issue is crime that affects every
Speaker 6: single aspects of daily life, much the same way that
Speaker 6: insecurity does in Nigeria, and it's something that is indiscriminate.
Speaker 4: But in fact, if you do want to bring it.
Speaker 6: To the metrics, it disproportionately affects young black men in
Speaker 6: the main when you're looking at the murders, and we
Speaker 6: need to talk about these members because they're important in
Speaker 6: the context of the claim that's been made falsely so
Speaker 6: by the Trump administration that the white minority in the country,
Speaker 6: particularly farmers, are being targeted. There are victims of this
Speaker 6: kind of persecution that we're seeing.
Speaker 4: And so that's what we saw unfolding for most of
Speaker 4: last year.
Speaker 6: Even when the South African government has tried to clarify
Speaker 6: that it's not the case that there are no white
Speaker 6: Africanas as it were, being targeted, they still offer this
Speaker 6: so called refugee program. We saw hundreds of African and
Speaker 6: South Africans leaving on a charter a jet to go
Speaker 6: and resettle in the US. And by the way, since then,
Speaker 6: we've not heard really great things about the living conditions
Speaker 6: about those South Africans that have left, many of them
Speaker 6: so that they're living in very cramped conditions and hotels,
Speaker 6: they're struggling to find work. It's quite a tedious bureaucratic
Speaker 6: process to get them to live the life that I
Speaker 6: think they would have anticipated that they would be.
Speaker 4: Living in the US. That's the one impact of it.
Speaker 6: The other major concern around the growing tensions that we
Speaker 6: saw last year and that have been somewhat sustained between
Speaker 6: Pretoria and Washington is the tariffs, the thirty percent tariff.
Speaker 4: That was imposed on South Africa.
Speaker 6: When we're looking at the export data from the year
Speaker 6: twenty twenty five, the first two quarters were strong. This
Speaker 6: was obviously before the liberation tablets came into effect. But
Speaker 6: what did happen when they did come rather when they
Speaker 6: were postponed? There was a ninety day pause, and during
Speaker 6: that ninety day pause, we saw exporters exporting a higher
Speaker 6: volume than usual and that's kind of given a cushion
Speaker 6: to the final export datas which are in the main
Speaker 6: Not to say that there has not been a massive
Speaker 6: impact on exporters the agricultural sector in the main, but
Speaker 6: it's been somewhat muted and offset by a number of
Speaker 6: other things that are happening. Maybe then, just the last
Speaker 6: point to make again linking to crime, some of the things.
Speaker 6: One of the things that has been a deterrent to
Speaker 6: tourists coming to South Africa is the experience of some
Speaker 6: that they have experienced really violent crime against to the
Speaker 6: point that it happens, it affects everyone in the country.
Speaker 6: When we're looking at South Africa's tourism data, obviously, like
Speaker 6: every other tourist destination in the world, there's been a
Speaker 6: somewhat of a slow down or a cooling in terms
Speaker 6: of tourists since the COVID period.
Speaker 4: In South Africa is no different to that.
Speaker 6: In terms of a lot of the countries that come
Speaker 6: to South Africa, we've not seen them return to the
Speaker 6: pre COVID levels, with the exception of two countries funny enough,
Speaker 6: that being Australia and the UK last year when we
Speaker 6: look at the final figures. So whatever the rhetorica has
Speaker 6: been coming from the Trump administration with the false allegations
Speaker 6: that they've been making, it's not been a determined at
Speaker 6: least that's what the numbers are selling us in terms
Speaker 6: of US citizens that are looking to come to South
Speaker 6: Africa for the purposes of tourism and leisure.
Speaker 1: One thing I think that's important to point out about
Speaker 1: the South Africa example of a Nigerian example is while
Speaker 1: they're rooted in this sort of you know, reality of
Speaker 1: insecurity issues in those countries, the main root of it
Speaker 1: is in US domestic politics. Right, so two strains of
Speaker 1: kind of Trumpian politics, White grievance politics and the evangelical
Speaker 1: Christian community in the US, which forms the bedrock of
Speaker 1: Trump's bace. And in both cases, this kind of conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorizing came up through those two political bases, and Trump
Speaker 1: has latched onto them in office to give those communities
Speaker 1: what they want. It's a pretty canny political move back
Speaker 1: in the US.
Speaker 2: Can I asked then, Neil, what do officials think is
Speaker 2: behind it? Do they think it is, as you say,
Speaker 2: rooted in US domestic politics, potentially it's about the mid
Speaker 2: term elections or do they think it's potentially about something more?
Speaker 1: No, I mean you can see from even public statements
Speaker 1: from I mean particularly in South Africa more than Nigeria.
Speaker 1: I don't think it has something to do with the midterms.
Speaker 1: This stuff came up last year, right very soon into
Speaker 1: his first term, well before the midterms, so I don't
Speaker 1: think it's linked to that. But I think it's clear
Speaker 1: that it's linked to these kind of US domestic issues.
Speaker 1: The thing is how the countries have responded, and like
Speaker 1: Stambilee said, both countries have acknowledged these insecurity issues and
Speaker 1: what Nigeria has done that I think is a bit
Speaker 1: different than what South Africa has done. Those Stimbula can
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, is they've kind of used
Speaker 1: it as an opportunity to ask the Trump administration for
Speaker 1: help in addressing the insecurity issues. So we've seen US
Speaker 1: military trainers, US intelligence sharing to target the Jihadis and
Speaker 1: to some extent, the armed bandit groups in the country.
Speaker 1: But again, they're doing that while not conceding or admitting
Speaker 1: that there is persecution of Christians in the country. They're
Speaker 1: saying very plainly that there's not persecution of Christians in
Speaker 1: the country. The government is led by a Muslim whose
Speaker 1: wife is herself an evangelical pastor, so they're sort of
Speaker 1: not conceding the point, but they are using it as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to address the insecurity issue that they and
Speaker 1: their predecessor governments have done very little to address.
Speaker 2: Hold that thought, Neil and Stambula stick with us. We're
Speaker 2: going to take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 2: we'll talk more about what this means for the future
Speaker 2: of these relationships between African countries and the US.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back today. We're looking at the US attention on
Speaker 2: alleged persecution in South Africa and Nigeria and the relationship
Speaker 2: between the US and African countries. We have Neil Munchi
Speaker 2: and also Sembile Stele joining us here. Simbile, we were
Speaker 2: talking a bit with you before the break about the
Speaker 2: state of relations when it comes to the US and
Speaker 2: South Africa. What more have we heard from the government
Speaker 2: about maybe what this looks like ahead in their mind?
Speaker 6: Look, I think very much is a situation where you
Speaker 6: have the US president kind of blowing hot and cold,
Speaker 6: and because it's not really clear what it is that
Speaker 6: he wants from South Africa, some commentations would argue that
Speaker 6: it seems like he forgets about the country at some
Speaker 6: point and point and then maybe someone was persent as year, hey,
Speaker 6: you remember this is happening, and then you'll kind of
Speaker 6: poke the bear again.
Speaker 4: At the moment, I think things are kind of muted.
Speaker 6: South Africa's position has remained that we are always open
Speaker 6: to engagement.
Speaker 4: But in the intervening period.
Speaker 6: What we've seen, obviously is the successful hosting from South
Speaker 6: Africa side of the G twenty, where the US, of course,
Speaker 6: you will remember, opted out of those meetings they have
Speaker 6: since taken over presidency the US now of the G
Speaker 6: twenty and they have actively excluded South Africa from the
Speaker 6: meetings which would have gotten underway in December. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 6: alongside that, though, one of the things that the South
Speaker 6: African government was worried about was South Africa's exclusion from
Speaker 6: the AGOA preferential free trade agreements. And what we've seen
Speaker 6: in the past few months is a US lawmakers actually
Speaker 6: renewing that agreement for a year and including South Africa
Speaker 6: rather not excluding it, because that was one.
Speaker 4: Of the fears.
Speaker 6: In addition to that South Africa not being excluded from
Speaker 6: that very pre preferential trade agreement, the US finally has
Speaker 6: an ambassador designate to His credentials have not yet been.
Speaker 4: Accepted in South Africa.
Speaker 6: But Leo Brent Bosel, who was a defender of the
Speaker 6: apartheid regime if you can call him that, in that
Speaker 6: period pre democracy in South Africa, he has now landed
Speaker 6: on South African shows. He's been doing a number of
Speaker 6: meetings and to be fair in his welcoming message, he's
Speaker 6: not really made many public addresses, but on social media,
Speaker 6: the welcoming messages that he made was very much conciliatory.
Speaker 6: It didn't give any sense of hostility. And I'm here
Speaker 6: to cause a mess. And so America has sent someone
Speaker 6: to represent them in South Africa and those engagements are underway.
Speaker 6: So it's kind of a mixed bag of things. That's
Speaker 6: why I say it seems to blow hot and cold.
Speaker 6: You never know what's going to happen next. But to
Speaker 6: Neil's points earlier about the electoral base which Donald Trump
Speaker 6: relies on and pants to, we might see that should
Speaker 6: he come under pressure in the months leading up to
Speaker 6: the midterms, he might revert his attention back to South
Speaker 6: Africa and kind of want to make a connection with
Speaker 6: that base again to say, look, I haven't forgotten about
Speaker 6: these interests. You say you're worried about the persecution of
Speaker 6: white South Africans in that country, So am I. That
Speaker 6: may give him a little bit of closeness again to
Speaker 6: that base as we move close up to the midterms. Again,
Speaker 6: not to say that his actions have been because of
Speaker 6: the midterms, but we do see that when election campaigns
Speaker 6: get underway, it's one way to offset the kind of
Speaker 6: pressures that come to be associated with that period of
Speaker 6: accountability that is associated with the midterms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Neil, how is diplomacy or how's Nigeria handling
Speaker 2: diplomacy different from South Africa. Is it a different picture
Speaker 2: altogether or do you still see some similarities maybe to
Speaker 2: how they're reacting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's similar to a lot of
Speaker 1: how a lot of emergent markets, I mean, even European
Speaker 1: allies do, which is a sort of you know, head down,
Speaker 1: don't want to cause too much trouble, don't want to
Speaker 1: get noticed too much kind of thing in case they
Speaker 1: incur his wrath. So there's a bit of that. But again,
Speaker 1: I think just like it's important to say for both
Speaker 1: countries that they're not conceding the point that there's any
Speaker 1: validity to these conspiracy theories about persecution of whites and
Speaker 1: South Africa or Christians in Nigeria, but they are attempting
Speaker 1: to kind of turn the conversation to a more comfortable
Speaker 1: one and one in which kind of both countries, both
Speaker 1: the US and Nigeria in this case, can claim a win.
Speaker 1: And so far Nigeria seems to be doing a pretty
Speaker 1: decent job at that.
Speaker 2: And thanks so much Neil and Stanbula again for joining
Speaker 2: us at this week on the podcast, and you can
Speaker 2: read more of our reporting from across the region on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg platforms.
Speaker 4: Now Here are some of.
Speaker 2: The other stories we've been following across the region this week,
Speaker 2: Billionaire Aliko dan Gote's oil refinery will prioritize supplying fuel
Speaker 2: in Nigeria, its home market, as long as it can
Speaker 2: access local crude.
Speaker 4: The West African.
Speaker 2: Nation is among the few on the continent with refineries,
Speaker 2: and as Africa's largest oil producer, is not reliant on
Speaker 2: Middle Eastern supplies. And South Africa's Central Bank is monitoring
Speaker 2: the market and would take action in the event of
Speaker 2: major dysfunction after the worst bond sell off since the
Speaker 2: COVID pandemic, as concerns mount that soaring oil prices and
Speaker 2: a weaker rand will fuel inflation. And you can follow
Speaker 2: these stories across Bloomberg, including of course the Next Africa Newsletter.
Speaker 2: Will put a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 2: This program was produced by Adrian.
Speaker 4: Bradley and Tiwa Adubio.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to follow and review this show wherever you
Speaker 2: usually get your podcasts, but for now I'm Jennifer's Abasacha.
Speaker 2: Thanks as always for listening.