INTERVIEW: One of South Africa’s richest men explains the “genius” behind Donald Trump’s Oval Office showdown with Cyril Ramaphosa

THE LOWDOWN:

• South African businessman Rob Hersov spoke with the Washington Reporter following President Donald Trump’s now-viral Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa where, politically, the latter was made into a political example by the leader of the free world.

• Hersov explained why Trump was a “genius” to describe what is happening to South Africa’s white farmers as a “genocide,” even though he argued that the final stages of genocide are not happening in his home country… yet.

• Trump’s devastating meeting with Ramaphosa was undeniably great for television, but Hersov wants Americans to understand the importance of continued engagement with South Africa, and he has a trio of demands he’d love to see the Trump administration extract from his country’s left-wing government.

• Ramaphosa’s meeting with Trump went viral after the US president wheeled out a television to display the racist chants calling for the deaths of White farmers and rows of white crosses memorializing the victims in response to Ramaphosa’s denial of a genocide ongoing in his country.

South African businessman Rob Hersov denies any interest in running for president in 2029, when the strategically-significant country has its next major national election.

But he’s spent the past several years building a name for himself as the first South African to take on the ruling African National Congress (ANC) Party.

Hersov spoke with the Washington Reporter following President Donald Trump’s now-viral Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa where, politically, the latter was made into a political example by the leader of the free world.

Hersov explained why Trump was a “genius” to describe what is happening to South Africa’s white farmers as a “genocide,” even though he argued that the final stages of genocide are not happening in his home country… yet.

While Hersov noted that full-scale extermination of South Africa’s white farmers is not occurring, he compared the country to Germany in 1933.

“Who is in the red beret in South Africa today chanting to kill the Boers?” he asked, referring to Julius Malema, the leader of the radical communist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). “In 1933, those were the brownshirts jumping up and down, saying, ‘kill the Jews.’”

“That's my 1933 analogy, they have 10 percent of the vote, and Cyril Ramaphosa said ‘they've only got 10 percent of the vote. They're not a threat.’ South Africa is 60 million people,” Hersov said. “Ten percent is 6 million. That's a lot of people who want to kill white people.”

“Imagine if there was a country where white people would say, kill Chinese people, kill whatever,” he posited.

During Ramaphosa’s meeting, Trump played video after video of Malema and his supporters chanting about their bloodthirsty desires. Ramaphosa pleaded ignorance.

In Hersov’s assessment, “Ramaphosa’s team was confused.”

“They were embarrassed. They were humiliated by these ‘kill the Boer’ videos. But I'm just hoping that what comes out of it is what I want, which is a proper discipline, forcing them to do those three things I’ve laid out,” Hersov said.

Trump’s devastating meeting with Ramaphosa was undeniably great for television, but Hersov wants Americans to understand the importance of continued engagement with South Africa, and he has a trio of demands he’d love to see the Trump administration extract from his country’s left-wing government.

“Why Africa? Why South Africa?” Hersov mused. “Africa is going to be 40 percent of the world's population, because Africa is breeding like rabbits. There are 55 countries in Africa. The largest economies are South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt.”

“But if you strip out North Africa, and then you look at macro Africa, the population growth is enormous. And it's either a positive, that these are the majority of the world's future consumers, or it’s a negative, that these are the majority of the world's unemployed and unemployable and undereducated,” he continued.

Another growing trend that Hersov said “no one talks about in Africa” is what he called the “rapid Islamification of Africa, which is probably the greatest [medium term] threat.”

“Take a country like Burkina Faso. One generation ago it was 70 percent Christian, now it's 70 percent Muslim. And this Islamification is moving south and all the problems that come with it are too. So Africa is, on the one hand, a massive opportunity, on the other hand, a massive threat to world peace, world security, and Russia and China — more China than Russia — have their fangs and talons into Africa in a massive way.”

Until Trump’s second term, Hersov noted, “America has had no African foreign policy.”

“They've outsourced it to proxies, and it hasn't been successful until Donald Trump said we need to take a look,” he said. Hersov said his homeland is “the gateway to Africa” and has “the biggest and “most sophisticated economy, even though the ANC has been deindustrializing it.”

The country’s Judeo-Christian values also keep it squarely in line with American policy, and should the Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists continue to strangle global shipping lanes, it can serve as a valuable conduit for global commerce.

But America must ensure that Russia, China, and Iran lose their growing influences.

South Africa, for its part, has work that Hersov wants it to do. He wants its government to stopping being a “prostitute” for Iran, which he said is paying the ANC to pursue a baseless case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

He also wants the government to “repeal BBEE,” the policy of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, which he called “a massive tariff” and said that “anyone who wants to do business, let alone we who live in South Africa, anyone who wants to do business in South Africa has to give 30 percent of their business to someone of different pigmentation because the government says so.”

Finally, he wants the government to “repeal expropriation without compensation…Trump should say ‘we're not going to do anything with you until you repeal those three things. In fact, we're going to punish you.’”

Below is a transcript of our interview with South African businessman Rob Hersov, lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:

I've understood your diagnoses of the failures of the ANC in South Africa as being different forms of Marxism: traditional class-based Marxism, and then the DEI-infused Marxism — is that an accurate description of their failures? Pretend you're a doctor for a second and diagnose the failures of South Africa under the ANC government.

Rob Hersov:

So the ANC, original charter of the ANC, which is almost 100 years old, was Soviet-inspired, and they're playing the long game. There's this thing called National Democratic Revolution, NDR, which has been infused more recently with radical economic transformation. Everything's got three letters, like CRT. This is the playbook that the ANC has been implementing, and it is increasing in its intensity now, even under this new government that we have called the Government of National Unity, or GNU. In May 2024, the ANC lost its majority, which it has had for 30 years and had to form this GNU, government of national unity, with the Democratic Alliance, who are the good guys, and a few other smaller parties. But even under this coalition government, the ANC has pushed forward with BBEE, Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, to privatize, to nationalize the health sector. Under NHI, the National Health Insurance, they've pushed through expropriation without compensation (EWC), which they say they're probably never going to use. But why have a law signed that is expropriation without compensation, where they only take it away in public interest? Anything can be in the public interest. Take the watch off your arm, take away your house, not just land, banks, and mines. So there are all these loaded guns being put in place, and that's why I think that South Africa could well be Germany in 1933. All the left is saying that ‘Donald Trump's insane. There is no genocide,’ but genocide isn't just extermination. That is the end result of a genocide. There's all of these things you have to put in place for a genocide to take place. They're 10 classifications. It was genius of Donald Trump, genius of him to use that definition, because it's brought the world's attention to that. And that's absolutely fundamental. Here we go. Here are the 10 elements of genocide: classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization — white people are Neanderthals, Jews are rats, kill the Boers — organization, polarization — I'd add separation here — preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial. And if you take those 10, probably six or seven are in motion in South Africa right now, and it wouldn't take much to add the others. I think it's not contiguous steps. Some of these are taking place simultaneously. The debate on Piers Morgan is about, ‘is there genocide?’ And my argument is going to be, there's no extermination, but you've got to do a hell of a lot before you begin a genocide. And the Belgians did it in Rwanda they formed the Hutus and the Tutsis.

Washington Reporter:

Trump did not care about South Africa in his first term — what is the reason that Americans should pay attention to South Africa? What of these twin Marxist-inspired failures are almost like the canary in the coal mines for our country?

Rob Hersov:

Why Africa? Why South Africa? Africa is going to be 40 percent of the world's population, because Africa is breeding like rabbits. There are 55 countries in Africa. The largest economies are South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt. But if you strip out North Africa, and then you look at macro Africa, the population growth enormous. And it's either a positive, that these are the majority of the world's future consumers, or it’s a negative, that these are the majority of the world's unemployed and unemployable and undereducated. The other trend that no one talks about in Africa is the rapid Islamification of Africa, which is probably the greatest threat. Radical Islam, to me, is the greatest threat to mankind in the medium term. China may be the long term, but it is radical Islam in the medium term. Take a country like Burkina Faso. One generation ago it was 70 percent Christian, now it's 70 percent Muslim. And this Islamification is moving south and all the problems that come with it are too. So Africa is, on the one hand, a massive opportunity, on the other hand, a massive threat to world peace, world security, and Russia and China — more China than Russia — have their fangs and talons into Africa in a massive way. America has had no African foreign policy. They've outsourced it to proxies, and it hasn't been successful until Donald Trump said we need to take a look. Take South Africa. Obviously, there's minerals, metals, rare earths in abundance. A huge amount of the arable land on the waters in Africa which has not been farmed properly. So Africa offers a huge opportunity and a huge threat. South Africa is the gateway to Africa. It's the biggest economy. It's the most sophisticated economy, even though the ANC has been deindustrializing it, chasing away productivity, and turning South Africa into a stepchild instead of the absolute engine of Africa, there is hope. There is more railway track in South Africa than in the rest of Africa combined. It can be turned around and the naval port of Simon’s Town can be critical; if you close off the Red Sea and you realize that could be blocked, Panama is a chokehold, the Suez Canal is a chokehold. Where do the boats go past? They go where they used to go prior to the Panama Canal. So there's a strategic element here. Around 88 percent of South Africans are Christian. It is a Judeo-Christian bastion that has been ignored, unloved, other than by China, Russia and increasingly, Iran.

Washington Reporter:

Let's start with Iran, because you were talking about the medium term threat of radical Islam. You've pointed out that Iran is funding the ANC’s absurd ICJ case against Israel. Before we even get to that, let's look at South Africa and apartheid that did exist there. As someone whose family has been there for five generations, I’m curious about your perspective here. Can you discuss what apartheid is, and why the application of the term ‘apartheid’ to Israel is so absurd?

Rob Hersov:

South Africa was created in 1910 with the Union of South Africa. Before that, it was provinces and regions. Some were run by the British, some were run by the Boers. We've had wars continually since the 1910 union of South Africa. In 1948, the Afrikaner National Party wins the election, and from 1948 to 1994, progressively apartheid was built into the Constitution, which was institutionalized. And what does apartheid mean? The word means separate. There was a form of paternalism, which in some ways, if you look at it rationally and logically, you can't blame people for thinking that. When the 1820 British settlers arrived with their military and their fancy boats with sails, they met tribes there that didn't even have the written word. What are you supposed to do? Say we're all equal, treat you equally? No. There was a paternalistic element to it, and that stayed with South Africa for a long time. I'm not justifying it. I'm just saying it evolved into apartheid. In the 1960s and 1970s, 20 percent of the population of South Africa was white. Today it's 7 percent, so there was always a concern by those in power that we would be outnumbered, that we white people, the white tribe of Africa, would be outnumbered in an increasing manner, and they had to do something about it, so they created apartheid and separate development. That's what it means. It doesn't apply to Israel. The word apartheid in people's minds, the word genocide in people's mind, means means extermination, whereas I've just explained there's a hell of a lot more to it than just the extermination bit, there's the preparation bit. Apartheid in people's minds means a racist system where one race is dominant to the other race. But it was never intended as such. It was intended to be separate development. It evolved into whites having a greater benefit of the separateness than blacks. All animals are equal. Some are more equal than others. It became that. In 1985 by the way, the government got together and said, ‘this doesn't work. It's not sustainable. We need to change peacefully.’ So applying that to Israel is absurd. It's throwing a word like Nazi at people who aren't Nazis. Just to say Nazi is a bad word and you're a bad guy. Apartheid is a bad word. It's thrown at Israel. Israel has nothing to do with apartheid. It never has been. It's just tarring them with a brush that everyone thinks is a bad word.

Washington Reporter:

You've laid out in the past how Iran has funded the ANC for a while, not just recently. Why did they pick South Africa to be the beachhead of this absurd and fact free accusation of genocide in the International Court of Justice?

Rob Hersov:

So you're Iran. You pay proxies to do your bidding for you — the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and others. Why not a proxy like the ANC? The ANC has this liberation Mandela mantle over its head. All the people in the world, in 1994 said, ‘we solved South Africa's problems, peaceful transition from a white minority to a black majority. What a wondrous thing we in the west has done. We've saved the world. We can do it elsewhere.’ Iran identified the ANC as bribable, as prostitutes that would take their money and do their bidding for years. The relationship that the ANC had with Gaddafi, with other not just Muslim countries but with other kind of monster, totalitarian regimes and theocrats went back a long way. And during apartheid, South Africa was isolated. We had some friends in the West, we had America, we had Europe, we had Taiwan, we had Israel. And the closest ties the apartheid government had were with equally isolated countries like Taiwan and Israel. So even though the Jews in South Africa were the main tribe of white people that supported the ANC against the National Party and fought against apartheid, the ANC has never really thanked them or forgiven Israel for its military partnership with the Afrikaner Nationalist government, and that's where it stems from. Gaddafi gave the ANC a lot of money. Israel, because of its isolation, supported a fellow isolation in South Africa, and the ANC has always held that grudge.

Washington Reporter:

One of your thoughts on what America can demand of Cyril Ramaphosa is that the government of South Africa dropped this case at the International Court of Justice.

Rob Hersov:

Stop being prostitutes to Iran.

Washington Reporter:

What are your other two that you want to see as well?

Rob Hersov:

Repeal BBEE. It's a massive tariff. Anyone who wants to do business, let alone we who live in South Africa, anyone who wants to do business in South Africa has to give 30 percent of their business to someone of different pigmentation because the government says so. It's a massive barrier to foreign direct investment. It's a tariff. It's a form of tariff. America doesn't like tariffs. Trump doesn't like tariffs. Repeal BBEE. It doesn't work. The cost to South Africa is off the charts. Repeal expropriation without compensation, and even the government justifies it as ‘its transformation, its diversity,’ all these words that when you say them sound great, but they don't mean that they're safe. Repeal expropriation without compensation, repeal the BBEE tariff, and remove the case against Israel. So those three things. Trump should say ‘we're not going to do anything with you until you repeal those three things. In fact, we're going to punish you.’

Washington Reporter:

Do you think the odds of those being repealed are higher or lower following their explosive meeting and the White House?

Rob Hersov:

Lower. In a lot of the comments of podcasts, people go, why wasn't ‘Rob Hersov there? He should have been there instead of Johann Rupert and the two golfers.’ But the reality is, if I'd been there, I would have been standing next to Vance, Elon Musk and Rubio, and not standing with Cyril Ramaphosa, because he's a disgrace.

Washington Reporter:

The the other two countries you were talking about, both in South Africa and in Africa more broadly, in contrast with America's lack of presence, are China and Russia. We look at China's Belt and Road Initiative throughout Africa as being a bait and switch with false promises. What has that done, both to Africa writ large, and what is the story of Chinese investment in South Africa right now?

Rob Hersov:

I'll talk about Africa in general. So China's gone through three phases of its Belt and Road investment in Africa. The first phase was rape and pillage, where Africans actually had no idea what they were doing negotiating with China, and China would say, ‘where's your laundry list of things you want infrastructure-wise? You want terminals at the port? You want bus stops all over the place? You want a new railway network? You want a speed train between the airport and the city, roads, whatever? Fine, here’s a $500 million investment, we're going to do it. In return, we want the following rights, and if you just value it at face value, this is $500 million. This is $5 billion. So we'll put up $500 million in cash. We get $5 billion in rights.’ Then they add ‘we're bringing in our own employees, our own workers, to build them.’ They take their prisoners from China, they take their unemployed, and they dump them in Africa. They live in cardboard boxes and build these things. They don't use local employment. That’s phase one. Phase Two, African countries wise up and say, ‘well, this isn't fair. We want these goodies or a loan, but let's do them on more commercial terms.’ Well, they never were on commercial terms. They were on rapacious terms. And phase three was China basically said, ‘we've loaned you money. We've done the following. You haven't delivered. We're going to take more of you.’ So China's gone from rape and pillage to a much more commercial basis. But they want to get paid back. This is not USAID. It's not America as Father Christmas with generosity, throwing money around willy nilly in pet projects. This is hardcore commercial terms, and Africa has suffered terribly at the hands of Chinese practices. Zambia is a quick example. So Zambia got heavily into Chinese debt. They got rid of Edgar Lungu, this corrupt idiot who just took money from China and got bribed and processed and Hakainde Hichilema, a free market, Judeo-Christian guy came into power. He's taken two years to work down the Chinese debt, get the Chinese off the books, try and get the economy moving again, but it's a huge pain in doing so.

Washington Reporter:

So Zambia as a model is a success story. You mentioned USAID. How should America rethink its approach to Africa?

Rob Hersov:

So forget aid. Forget aid. Stop these NGOs. Stop running around being Father Christmas and loving and handing out gifts. Be commercial. Having a big American company come in and invest and build things and commercialize them is what Africa wants and needs. They don't want aid. And I really am speaking on behalf of all of Africa, because I've spoken to all the presidents I know, and while they'll take aid if you can give it, they'd much rather have big American corporations coming in and building businesses and operating them, hiring people.

Washington Reporter:

You had mentioned Russia. What is their presence in Africa?

Rob Hersov:

So Russia's very different. China wants rare earths, coal, timber, because China's destroyed its own its forests. They are gone. It's polluted rivers. It's run out of natural resources. It needs to build its Belt and Road and secure resources. It doesn't have any. America has its own resources, and is able to get them. Russia has everything that Africa has. It has massive timber. It has its own coal, aluminum, nickel, cobalt. Russia's got all the resources itself, and doesn't need the resources from Africa. So it's more military and strategic than it is commercial and strategic. China's military presence in Africa is limited. I think they've got the big port in Djibouti, but so does America. You'd be surprised to find any Chinese military presence, whereas Russia is in there, the Wagner group, even though they renamed it. They definitely have a military presence there, in Ethiopia and other places. So Russia's military is strategic, but it's not really rape and pillage for for resources.

Washington Reporter:

So let's look at us and South Africa. I think the first flash point that people here saw with this was Rubio a couple months ago saying that South Africa's ambassador is no longer welcome.

Rob Hersov:

That was a fantastic move. When the Government of National Unity got brought in in May 2024, Helen Zille, the head of the Democratic Alliance, said a very interesting thing to me. She said when they were dividing the ministries up, obviously the ANC kept all the ideological ones, like trade and industry, anything union related. The Democratic Alliance got agriculture, education, Home Affairs, all the stuff that needed to be fixed. It didn't have an ideological component. But the one area that the ANC did not let the DA get anywhere near, even as deputy ministers, was in foreign affairs. And why? Because Iran was already paying the agency to proceed with the ICJ case against Israel, and they wanted to control government, the South African government's international mouthpiece, who they ally with, what they say, and that's where the Islamists populated the South African government. Only 2.8 percent of South Africans are Muslims. And until recently, the non-Muslim population was benign, secular, moderate, decent. Their neighbors were Jews. Everyone got unwell the minute Iran started paying the ANC, then they became anti-Semitic. I’m talking Hamas flag waving, nasty anti-Semites. The broad population of South Africa, 88 percent is Christian; this is a Judeo-Christian, conservative, compassionate, decent country. Everyone tends to get on. But Iran has inserted a really anti-Semitic, nasty angle at the top of the ANC. It hasn't worked its way down. If you took a poll of ANC voters, they are Judeo-Christian. And I put the Judeo in there importantly, because they are believers that Israel is the center of their religion, their Christian religion, and Jews are their cousins. It's just the head of the top people of the ANC that are the anti-Semites and Naledi Pandor, from a Zulu aristocratic family, converted to Islam. Her husband was a Muslim, and she was head of Foreign Affairs. She carried the bags back from Iran with the money. Ebrahim Rasool, he was not ever an ambassador. He was an ideologue, an Islamic ideologue. He was sent as ambassadors. You know, he was the prior ambassador. He did nothing in Washington except host Islamic functions and worked with the clerics.

Washington Reporter:

Let's get to the biggest flash point here of this meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa and Trump. Beforehand, you already predicted it would have been a public meeting and you wanted to be 10 times Zelenskyy. Where were you when it happened? And walk us through your reaction as you experienced it real time.

Rob Hersov:

Donald Trump did all the talking. I thought he was genius, Elon Musk was there with razor eyes. Rubio didn't say anything. Vance didn't say anything. They called it ambush, but it was genius theater. Trump picked the low hanging fruit. Who is in the red beret in South Africa today chanting to kill the Boers? In 1933 those were the brown shirts jumping up and down, saying, ‘kill the Jews.’ That's my 1933 analogy, they have 10 percent of the vote, and Cyril Ramaphosa said ‘they've only got 10 percent of the vote. They're not a threat.’ South Africa is 60 million people. 10 percent is 6 million. That's a lot of people who want to kill white people. Imagine if there was a country where white people would say, kill Chinese people, kill whatever. Ramaphosa’s team was confused. They were embarrassed. They were humiliated by these ‘kill the Boer’ videos. But I'm just hoping that what comes out of it is what I want, which is a proper discipline, forcing them to do those three things I’ve laid out.

Washington Reporter:

How did this meeting play in South Africa?

Rob Hersov:

A lot of the people on the street were absolutely incensed that Cyril Ramaphosa did not admit that we have a real problem with security. It's very dangerous being an average human being in South Africa; I have security. I live near secure streets, in a secure house, and in the western province of Cape Town, which is safe. The average South African is under threat at all times. They can't speak out, they can't fire people, they can't walk at night. It's a horrific life, and to have these billionaires, golfers overseas downplay the situation was frustrating, I think. Why would these golfers support the ANC primarily led government? This government is deindustrializing our country, it’s reduced our education system to a joke. They've destroyed everything in 30 years. Call them out is my view, but the reason why these golfers in the meeting think they're supporting us through Ramaphosa and the GNU government is because the alternative is so terrifying. The alternative is the 10 percent of the voters who chant ‘kill the Boer,’ and Jacob Zuma. 10 percent of the vote goes to EFF, and 15 percent would go with Jacob Zuma, who set up his new party less than one year before the election, and got 15 percent. So if you take 10 plus 15, 25 percent of the country is hard left, wanting to expropriate without compensation on day one and to chase the white South Africans out of the country. So if I'm going to give Johann Rupert some credit for defending Cyril Ramaphosa in that meeting, it's kind of the white guys ride into the rescue. It's to keep those bad guys out, and maybe I should give him the credit for trying to do that. But my view is, we've just been boiled like frogs in a pot. It's 1933 then it's gonna be kristallnacht, then there's going to be no escape, then we won't be allowed to leave, then they'll disarm us. And that could come, that's what could come next. And having Cyril Ramaphosa in for two more years gives us two more years to try and persuade the population that we in the center are not going to reintroduce apartheid. We're not going to take away their social grants, that we can work with through all these teams, and that they shouldn't vote the the radical left, so maybe that is what Johann Rupert and the golfers were trying to do, bolster Cyril, to make him see the light, to make the changes that are needed to head west, not east. Maybe I should give them that sort of credit. I however want a crisis. I'm sick of being boiled like a frog.

Washington Reporter:

You had mentioned the media coverage of this, and you got your start inadvertently in media, working with Rupert Murdoch, and now you started Truth Report, a news site that is coming out very soon. How have you seen the media change since you were literally Rupert Murdoch's right hand man, and how has that informed your own new media venture that you're working on?

Rob Hersov:

In the 80s, when I was in America, I was reading these extraordinary books, these neoconservative books, libertarian books. It really changed my life, being here for those six years, and the polarization didn't exist as much then. Now, obviously, if you go back to 1975, Nixon, Vietnam War, there were people on the streets burning things. There was massive semi civil unrest and polarization. In the 80s that didn't exist. Reagan was coming in, it was the coolest time. So my introduction to conservatism, to a belief in the Judeo-Christian way, libertarianism, started then, and I've always taken that with me. But back then there was ABC, CBS, NBC, and they weren't hard left. There wasn't Multi Channel Television. That was coming. We were introducing it with Direct TV. I worked on the original business plan, and there wasn't the internet. You got your news sources from newspapers, magazines and three television stations, and then box game. And I was there when Rupert said, you're going to go to Los Angeles with Barry Diller and launch a new television station. And media then was quite was not as polarized as it is now, but then there were less outlets. Now, in South Africa, we have a pretty free press and free speech. For me to say what I'm saying about South Africa, in half the countries I'd be dead. In South Africa I can say it and get away with it, and I'm getting less ranty and ravy, like I used to be, and am more professional, but I'm not holding back. The media in South Africa is pretty broad based. Some of it has been captured by ANC sources, but there are enough podcasters and alternative media right now that it works to get information out, and I've got a massive following in South Africa because I'm not smart enough to lie. I just tell it like it is.

Washington Reporter:

How do your lessons from the early years of working with Murdoch inform your newest news endeavor?

Rob Hersov:

I'm copying what happened in America prior to Trump being elected — Trump avoided mainstream media, and he focused on the podcasters, like Charlie Kirk. I listened to the three hour show that he did with Joe Rogan, and I walked away really liking it, and I love his policies. I’m as MAGA as you can get as a South African, and I was calling Trump well before election in night in 2016. When we moved back to South Africa after 31 years overseas, we got a call from one of the mothers at my daughter’s school saying ‘the mum who's organizing the parent get together is now really sick. Would you be prepared to do it?’ I said, ‘yeah, let's do the dinner.’ In my speech at the dinner, I stood up, and said ‘welcome to everyone. I just want you all to know that I think Donald Trump will be the best president of America.’ This is before he got it. All the dads had never had anyone say this, and afterwards, they quietly came up and thanked me, so I was out there right at the beginning. The Truth Report is pulling an amalgamation of all the news sources, they all have their audiences, and putting them into one voice to amplify them without fear. And there's a guy, Gareth Cliff. He's a great guy and he's been a lone voice, but I had the credibility of the wealthy businessman who's lived overseas. He's very well connected. He's fearless, but because I don't have 20,000 employees, I am impossible to cancel.

Washington Reporter:

Let's look at another wealthy South African who lives in America now — Elon Musk. You and he both have discussed the woke mind virus, and you've talked about the need for DOGE in South Africa as well. And so I'm curious where, where in South Africa does the woke mind virus from?

Rob Hersov:

It comes from America. You exported Robin DiAngelo, the wicked witch, to South Africa. Look at our universities, they've gone so woke. The University of Cape Town, the number one university in Africa where I attended, only exists anymore if you do business, science, medicine and accounting — you might as well write the rest of the university off. And they've lost hundreds of millions of dollars of funding this year, because of its stance on Israel. Both private donors and the the Dell fund have cut them of.

Washington Reporter:

You've also talked about DOGE and the need for that in South Africa.

Rob Hersov:

We need way more than DOGE. The ANC government, over the last 30 years, has replaced every single competent person at senior and mid level, not just in the state owned enterprises, but in every municipality, sewage works, electricity supply organization. If there's such a thing as a maintenance budget, it gets stolen. What does that mean? Things Fall Apart. Our deindustrialization is off the charts. It's just into the abyss. And we reached a point where we hit the Laffer curve, which means more the more we raise taxes the less money we raise. They can't actually tax us anymore, and our debt ceiling has been hit, breached actually, for the IMF, World Bank, and the only way forward is economic growth and cutting costs. The ANC has no idea what to do on economic growth because they're chasing away foreign direct investment. No foreigners can invest in South Africa with over regulation and expropriation. Why would you do it? On the second hand, they can't cut costs. Why not? Because everyone that works for the government is one of their voters, and it's a mafia money waterfall. I bribe you right there, but where do I get the money from the government to bribe you? They've reached capacity, where if they fire people, they lose them to other parties. 28 million South Africans survive on the social grants. Ramaphosa says that with pride. Can I swear?

Washington Reporter:

Yeah, of course.

Rob Hersov:

Our economy is fucked.

Washington Reporter:

You're already talking about Iran's very nefarious, overt or covert bribery going on in South Africa. Trump is trying to negotiate a nuclear deal with the Ayatollah, who is live tweeting ‘Death to America every day.’ What lessons from Iran's pernicious involvement in South Africa do you think that America should be paying attention to?

Rob Hersov:

America should just add as a sub clause in its agreement, no more backing proxies, and ANC is an Iran proxy.

Washington Reporter:

Would Iran agree to such a thing?

Rob Hersov:

I think if the ANC pull back on the ICJ against Israel, Iran will find it a lot harder to want to back the ANC. What other benefits are they going to get? The Muslim population of South Africa is so small it's never going to have a political influence beyond its 2.5, 3, 4 percent, so its only way was to infiltrate the ANC by bribing them to get control of foreign affairs.

Washington Reporter:

America is coming up on its 250th anniversary. This is the longest surviving, multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy in the world. What lessons from South African history do you think America should learn from?

Rob Hersov:

Let me give you a good thing. At the end of 1994 there were a lot of recriminations, like ‘my son went missing in police custody. My daughter got beaten up by the police. We lost our father,’ all these horrific things. South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. The lawyers involved were mostly Jewish, and they created this forum where anyone who'd done something evil, pernicious, murderous could come and testify, and as long as they told the truth, in an open forum with the parents and the children who got killed, they would be forgiven, and then Rwanda did the same thing. So what can we learn? We have to move forward. Can't continually have reparations, anger and resentment, uncertainty. And that Truth and Reconciliation Committee was a blood letting of such importance. And the fact is, 20, 30 years later, the ANC government is trying to try and deny the failure that it's had over 30 years of failure in economic growth, education, basic services, and now it is returning to reparations. They're going back to apartheid, whiteness, colonialism. It's denying what they've done to fuck the country up, and trying to extract from us money and jobs.

Washington Reporter:

My final question is, you've got the hair for it; you're running for president, you’ve said, and let me finish here, that you aren't going to run because you have ADHD and would interrupt people in meetings. You didn't interrupt me that much today, and that was basically the main reason for not running. You might not want to announce it in this conversation, but I'm ready to declare that you are running.

Rob Hersov:

If I were a benevolent dictator, I'd take the job. I may come across very well in how I speak and be intelligent and insightful, but I have a low attention detail. I'm more of a leader than a road builder and I could assemble a very good team. In a funny way, I don't think South Africa wouldn't would necessarily just have to have the black president. I think a white president would actually still be okay. We need a Javier Milei.

Washington Reporter:

So what do you anticipate your involvement in 2029 looking like?

Rob Hersov:

Am I moving the needle? Yes, I am. So. Four years ago, anyone who stood up and said, ‘the ANC are morons and kleptocrats’ would be shunned. You can't say that. This is the Liberation Organization of Nelson Mandela. They saved us! I was first to call them morons publicly, and then I named names. No one had ever done that. Now people are doing so. I've had an impact on South Africa to give people the spine to stand up. I've done that. I'm taking credit on that alone. What is my role going forward? Get into the international media and keep the pressure up, like Donald Trump has created. Thank you America. I want to make it so that our government can't hide, so they can't pretend to be the Liberation Army that saves us whereas at home they're destroying us. I also want to shine the spotlight from China. I want to get on the big podcasters in America and internationally and tell the truth, and I think I am very well suited to do that. I actually don't know what my role could be. I really don't, once South Africa starts turning it'll take off like a rocket. There's so much wealth in the South African world, and our young people are amazing. A reverse diaspora to South Africa would take the country to the next level; we would grow like never before, and we would be the fastest growing country, if the government can do the things that I would recommend they do: privatize, deregulate all the Milei stuff, the reverse diaspora charts and the money pouring in, there's so much goodwill for that country, foreign direct investment, we'd be saved. And then I've done my job. But the changes that I want to need to make in South Africa, I want to do immediately, like Donald Trump's first 100 days when he moved with warp speed. That's the only way to fix the country. And I think in a democracy with councils and committees and approvals, and you can't do it. It's too slow. I want to privatize all the states owned enterprises on day one. Also, I hate pomp and circumstance, and kissing babies, shaking hands, attending boring meetings, I’m over that.

Washington Reporter:

It worked for Donald Trump, maybe it can work for South Africa. Thanks so much for chatting, Rob.