USAID fought apartheid. Musk is killing it

The makings of an unelected coup

As we speak, an unelected billionaire, born in South Africa, is staging an unconstitutional coup in the United States, shutting down an agency that happened to fight the apartheid regime he and his family thrived under as rich whites.

Now take a moment and read that again.

This is not a drill. All the drills are behind us now.

The billionaire, of course, is Elon Musk, who decided in recent days to disembowel USAID, the nation’s primary agency for foreign aid, an indispensable tool of diplomacy and the exercise of soft power, and one of the largest aid providers on the planet. Musk is reportedly (and by his own claims) overseeing the dismissal of security staff, followed by the apparent firings of 600 USAID employees over the weekend, and, more generally, his project to carry out Trump’s wish to destroy the agency. This is, of course, illegal and unconstitutional, as only Congress — certainly not an unelected consultant without even an appointment — can wind down an agency.

Even so, Trump has issued an executive order, asserting his right to do just do that:

The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.

But it’s Musk — apparently acting as an agent of the executive branch, though without any official role — who has, with his own team of subcontractors, been carrying out the attack on USAID systems and employees, and providing what passes for a rationale:

“It became apparent that its not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.” “We’re shutting it down.”

Which raises the question: What did USAID ever do to Elon Musk?

The agency operates so extensively around the world that it’s hard to know. When the Trump whisperer Steve Bannon was recently asked his thoughts about Musk, he suggested that his origins as a white South African growing up while apartheid was still in force might deserve more scrutiny:

He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have white South Africans, the most racist people in the world, commenting on everything that happens in the United States?

Setting aside Bannon’s generalizations, there is the question of whether the USAID’s work in South Africa years ago would have endeared it to Musk — or angered him.

USAID, it turns out, was important in bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa. And, in an inversion of today’s anti-congressional coup, that work by the agency came about because Congress actually overrode former President Reagan’s veto of aid and asserted its leadership role in the making of U.S. law, in this case the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA).

Because the CAAA was seen as the American people’s policy and not the administration’s policy, it gave USAID entry to South African communities that were hesitant to work with the U.S. government.

That support opened the door for further, and ultimately inexorable, pressure on the apartheid government — the pressure that eventually helped to end apartheid itself.

The early work of USAID/South Africa successfully laid the groundwork for the much larger programs that followed. Key accomplishments were reversing the deeply held belief of the South African anti-apartheid leadership that the United States was opposed to regime change; quickly identifying and cultivating the current and future political, economic, and social leadership of a nonracial South Africa; putting in place a program framework that was perceived by anti-apartheid leadership and the Congress as responsive to the needs of the struggle; and, most importantly, effectively implementing the will of the American people as expressed by the Act.

Now, it’s possible that Elon Musk, having grown up a white South African under apartheid, absolutely loved this part of USAID’s work. It’s possible that this work of USAID to help dismantle apartheid was his favorite work, and that it’s all the other work USAID did that offended him. Sure, that is totally, 100 percent possible, yes.

More to the point, what USAID did in that episode in South Africa, and how it came about — that expression of the will of the American people expressed through their elected representatives in Congress and the agencies through which Congress exercises that expression — are anathema to Trump and his co-conspirators. And the fact that, in the case of South Africa, that power ended a system of racist domination simply adds insult to injury. As Trump posted on his own Truth Social platform:

This imagined threat to white people’s property rights — expressed in the similar language as border panic about a supposed invasion — is a longstanding obsession of Trump’s, of course. But beyond him, there’s a group that takes it very personally — the South African oligarchs who dominate our politics — first among them, Elon Musk.

Even putting aside the fact that this analysis of USAID as a “criminal organization” is rooted in historical grudges and racist conspiracies, and not in fact, what does shuttering USAID get the United States?

The Trump administration’s continuing attacks on core institutions, especially the isolationist moves — withdrawing from the WHO, defunding PEPFAR, shutting down USAID — don’t just diminish the United States. They endanger people around the world, put us all at greater risk of disease, make everyone poorer, and intensify the economic and climate crises that destabilize societies and turn citizens into refugees.

It’s a lose-lose situation, writes Jessica Hamelzou in MIT Technology Review:

“Diseases don’t stick to national boundaries, hence this decision is not only concerning for the US, but in fact for every country in the world,” says Pauline Scheelbeek at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.“With the US no longer reporting to the WHO nor funding part of this process, the evidence on which public health interventions and solutions should be based is incomplete.”

And all that to “save” the U.S. less than 1 percent of the federal budget: a tiny investment that brings in huge, consistent, essential, and irreplaceable returns in human terms.

As Michael Schiffer writes for Just Security,

[F]oreign assistance, though charitable, isn’t charity. It’s a strategic investment that safeguards America’s most important interests while reflecting its highest values. It protects the United States from threats abroad before they reach America’s shores, from diseases to fentanyl to terrorism. It helps to combat human trafficking, supports democratic elections, and stems the flow of migration, attacking the root causes that force people to flee. It helps secure critical supply chains and builds markets for U.S. exports while creating jobs at home. And in an era of strategic competition, foreign aid wins influence and allies.

Even if you look at politics as being mostly about international competition, Trump’s maneuvers seem like an own goal, giving up an essential lever of diplomacy even as China — the U.S’s supposed most important international rival — has expanded its own aid efforts massively in recent decades and looks prepared to fill the hole left by the abandoned American missions that did so much to hold the old rules-based international order together.

As Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Politico:

“I am concerned that an effort to reorganize the agency would be used as pretext to further gut U.S. foreign aid. If the objective is to advance American interests, my Republican colleagues who talk a big game about outcompeting China and its global investments should explain how this will do anything but shoot us in the foot.”

Is it then, as Dylan Matthews writes at Vox, just a trial run and mostly about asserting a regime policy of abandoning carrots for sticks? USAID is an agency that few of Trump’s domestic supporters might notice the impacts of, at least in the short term. But if the audience for the assault is the government itself, it gives elected officials and the media a cautionary example for how the administration plans to do an end-run around Congress and in practice kill off federal programs that would otherwise require legislative action to end.

“If what you’re trying to do is downsize an agency that you feel is bloated in a responsible way, you don’t push out the 60 most senior staff and send home all the contractors who make the agency work,” Konyndyk says. “Those aren’t things you do if your concern is government effectiveness and efficiency. Those are things you do if you are trying to create an atmosphere of intimidation.”

People are pushing back: Federal workers are physically blocking the doors to the Office of Personnel Management. James Dennehy, who heads up the FBI’s New York field office, has told his agents to stand firm and resist the illegal firings. A host of lawsuits are in motion.

But if we want a government that’s a part of the world and not against it, that isn’t a tool for the imagined grudges of oligarchs and autocrats, working in the fog of a fever dream, it’s up to elected Democrats — and any elected Republicans who care about the Constitution’s separation of powers and Congress’s role in working on behalf of the American people through legislation — to act now, before it’s too late.

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Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images