Last night President Donald Trump, in his sit-down meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, went off on his normal ‘lonely road of a non empathetic mind’ and fixated on the ‘genocide issue’.
Trump succeeded in making a lot of people squirm and managed to perpetuate the notion that only white people can save South Africa when DA Leader John Steenhuisen came out in full support of Ramaphosa and ythe GNU. Or so we thought as, still smarting from Steenhuisen saving Ramaphosa, Trump peppered his follow up remarks with claims that the EFF are a large (not small) party…
But, I am sure that the South African government has had various number of psychologists studying Trump to see what makes the man tick and what he responds to.
Our government could have saved time and money by just studying the history of the humble tomato and it’s oblivion to the struggle to classify it as a fruit or vegetable in the United States.
And it goes all the way back to 1883 when taxes were raised on imported vegetables.
The actions by John Nix & Co, in reaction to this were typical of Trump and his ‘Art of the Deal’. Deny, obfuscate, talk over, accuse, revert to the courts…. (Oh crap did I just describe Zuma as well?)
On March 3, 1883, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883, requiring a tax to be paid on imported vegetables, but not fruit. The John Nix & Co. company filed a suit against Edward L. Hedden, Collector of the Port of New York, to recover back duties paid under protest on their tomato imports. They argued against the tariff by pointing out that, botanically, a tomato is a fruit due to its seed-bearing structure growing from the flowering part of a plant.
In effect what Trump did last night was look at a tomatoes fruit defining structure (the deaths of white people in SA) and ignore the entire tomato as a vegetable (the deaths of all people in SA) in order to bully South Africa into making a deal that he will later reveal.
The court unanimously decided in favor of the respondent (tax collector) and found that the tomato should be classified under the customs regulations as a vegetable, based on the ways in which it is used, and the popular perception to this end. Justice Horace Gray, writing the opinion for the Court, stated that:
The passages cited from the dictionaries define the word ‘fruit’ as the seed of plants, or that part of plants which contains the seed, and especially the juicy, pulpy products of certain plants, covering and containing the seed. These definitions have no tendency to show that tomatoes are ‘fruit,’ as distinguished from ‘vegetables,’ in common speech, or within the meaning of the tariff act.
I learned a valuable lesson a long long time ago: “When in pursuit of the truth or motivation for anyone’s actions you need to follow the money!” Trump (and the USA) want something from South Africa and they are playing hardball to get it.
