Trumps wall plans “a good start but not enough” say world’s leaders

Speaking at a United Nations conference in Paris, world leaders today embraced Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s controversial plans for a giant wall, saying “it’s a visionary and necessary move, but at this stage, it’s just not enough.”

“Much more work needs to be done,” said the Presidents and leaders of 193 nations across the globe. “For a start, it’s not high enough. It needs to be taller. Thicker. Larger. Longer. It needs to be covered in surface-to-air-missile launchers, electrified barbed wire and landmines. That’s the only way to be absolutely sure that nothing can get into America. Or, more specifically, out.”

“Just imagine the kind of person who would try to come into our country from the post-apocalyptic hellhole that will be Trump’s America?” said the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, who – along with his nation – is personally footing the bill for the construction of the gargantuan border wall. “The man might be insane, but he’s right: we need those borders to be utterly impassable.”

He went on to add that Trump’s vision of protecting jobs, healthcare, and welfare were “an inspiration” that all other nations should draw from.

“Again, Trump is right: we need to protect our jobs, our hospitals and our social grants. Right now, there are thousands of Mexicans whose jobs as baristas, social media managers, and website designers will be threatened by a wave of American liberal immigrants. Right now – in places like Mexico and Cuba – millions of dollars are thrown away into giving American immigrants affordable, state-funded healthcare and drugs that aren’t marked up 5000% by greedy pharmaceutical corporations. We must protect what is ours.”

Other presidents agreed and elucidated.

“Trumps aims are sound and well-founded,” said Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. “As time goes on and the spread of fascism worsens, thousands of people will attempt to escape their authoritarian regimes of hatred and oppression into brighter lands of tolerance and respect for basic human rights. Who knows, maybe some of these immigrants might come from countries that aren’t the future United States?”

However, some political analysis have noted concern for Trump’s plans, saying it could “direly affect” his term of Presidency.

“If the border wall goes up, we have to ask ourselves some important questions,” said head researcher at the Palfron Foundation of International Affairs, Hillary Cuck. “Questions like, ‘where will Donald get undocumented Polish Immigrants to work for him?’, ‘Where will our expensive, handmade toupees come from?’ and, mostly importantly, ‘Who will cut our lawns, clean our pools and take up all the shitty jobs that no one wants?’”

However, supporters are standing by their man.

“He’s gonna be great,” said one man. “He has the brightest 22-year-old hot graduate minds informing his foreign policy, a rich history of making tough decisions – especially on season three of The Apprentice – and sound business acumen. Hell, his corporations have only declared bankruptcy like four times, tops, and he's written a bunch of business books that go all the way up until Chapter 11."

“Besides, it’s not like he’s naïve and wildly unqualified and would get totally walked over by cutthroat Chinese businessmen who would just retaliate punitive duties with their own tax increases and higher duties on Chinese products that America depends on, or get absolutely pawned by political animals like Vladimir Putin… right?”

Disclosure: the brilliant Chapter 11 joke isn't mine.

Immigration - the scourge of the whole world

You know what’s ruining this country – no, the entire blerrie world? Immigrants. Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen tackles this uncomfortable topic, showing us the truth behind something many people are hesitant to talk about frankly and honestly.

Immigration, my friends. Is it just me, or does this problem seem to be getting worse and worse every year? It seems that no matter where you go, you can’t even move without bumping into someone who isn’t from here. With xenophobic attacks so recurrent and regular that Somali shopkeepers could set their fiscal calendars by them, I decided to look at this issue. And let me tell you, it’s a lot more complicated than it at first seems.

Now, immigration has long been a problem in almost all societies. Immigration goes as far back as the unwanted and dirty flood of Jews and Irish and Poles into America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hell, we could go one step further and say that this scourge was affecting societies even as far back as the Southwards migration of Zulu and Bantu peoples into XhoiSan territories in South Africa in the early AD, or the northwards migration of Homo Habilus and other pre-modern humans nearly 70 000 years ago, or even the ugly, unstoppable wave of society-leeching primordial fish-lizard creatures that crawled unwelcomed and unwanted onto the prehistoric marshes of Pangea hundreds of millions of years ago.

Of course, today the problem is far, far worse, because back then there were no jobs or healthcare to steal.

Yes, friends, it might shock you to hear this, but immigrants are taking our healthcare and our government grants: you know, those things that are supposed to be reserved for South Africans, that our hard-working tax payers shell out for after they’ve finished handing billions of Rands to Zuma for his giant luxury Palacemansioncompound?

I remember a time when I used to think “but surely getting healthcare requires a valid ID and many documents proving your status as a tax-paying citizen? Surely getting the laughably paltry handouts that thousands of below-the-breadline South Africans survive on every month is a bit more difficult than just walking into a SASSA office and putting out your grimy, Zimbabwean hands?” Turns out I was wrong, friends. And that’s scary, because I’m never wrong.

And it doesn’t stop there: our jobs are being thrown out the window and into the laps of Malawian borderjumpers. “But that makes no sense,” I hear you predictably retort, “Johan, wouldn’t most companies be hesitant to give scarce jobs to what you have on many, many occasions, called ‘a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing unskilled thieves who don’t even speak our language’? Surely any employer would want to avoid huge legal ramifications and massive fines for breaking labour laws by making sure to go Proudly South African?” Well, to that I say “that’s the kind of senseless, contradictory society we live in.”

However, the damage goes beyond just the financial: what’s being hurt even more is our national culture and identity. All these immigrants make no effort to fit in, to try and be a part of South African society.

You know, every day I drive from my job at a single-language newspaper back to my home in that gated, all-white, English-Afrikaner closed community in Sandton and I pass these Somali or Zimbo neighbourhoods, these anti-nationalist, unpatriotic attempts to stick to one culture without embracing the beautiful diversity of South Africa. It’s sad and sickening. The put themselves behind these walls and barriers, and don’t even try to mix with everyday South Africans. Hell, they don’t even make an effort to try and learn any of the 11 official languages of South Africa, for example English, or Afrikaans, or, er, one of those other ones. Even the Zulu security guy who mans the barbwire, electrified gate of my suburb comments on it sometimes.

Or at least, I think he does. I don’t speak Zulu.

But what I can’t stand most of all is the pretence they put up, the lies and excuses they tell me to try and make us feel sorry for them. They put up this sad story of running away from hateful or outright murderous political regimes or iron-fisted dictatorships; they give us these sop tales of “brutal police” and “racist officials and harsh, anti-human immigration laws”; they wax lyrical about having left everything – their language, their home, their history, their culture, their families, their entire way of life and identity – just to live in fear and poverty in a country that despises and assaults them just for wanting a better life for them and their children. And why? Well, so that you won’t complain when they take that below-minimum-wage, no-security job that rightfully belongs to people born here!

You know, it’s exactly for this reason that I stopped my application to live and work in England or Australia. All I want is to go there, trade in my green passport, and live and work in peace: but how can I move overseas to live on greener pastures when all these bloody immigrants are stealing the jobs that I want, taking the healthcare and government grants that I’ll need when I get there? It’s absurd.

This, my friends is why I congratulate the ANC on at least one thing: that they’ve stood up for South Africans’ rights everywhere. You know, silly organisations like the Human Rights Watch, or so-called Amnesty International, might condemn South Africa’s diplomatic and political stance on human rights atrocities in other African countries, and her harsh, “unjust, retrogressive” immigration laws that miss opportunities to integrate trained professionals such as teachers, scientists and skilled workers into our society to better serve our people, but I say “well done.”

As tempting as it is to enjoy the cheap labour these guys offer (and that cool perk of being able to fire them at will, which forces them to never complain about how little you pay them for fear of you reporting them to the police on trumped up charges of theft) we need to stick to a strong code of national pride and moral integrity, to support - and ardently defend the rights of - those human beings who share a birthplace with us.

After all, how can we possibly have a better South Africa if it’s full of Zimbabweans?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.
He also doesn't know his editor and employer is Zimbabwean.