Colonial Toolbox Reopened: Venezuela, oil and the return of imperial discipline
Opinion
The reported capture of President Nicolás Maduro by US forces, his appearance in handcuffs, and the subsequent declaration by President Donald Trump that the US will now “run” Venezuela are not merely legal manoeuvres.
Image: Supplied
HISTORY has a cruel way of rhyming when the powerful grow impatient. In the early hours of January 3, 2026, the world awoke to images that felt more like a return to the 19th-century frontier than modern diplomacy.
The reported capture of President Nicolás Maduro by US forces, his appearance in handcuffs, and the subsequent declaration by President Donald Trump that the US will now “run” Venezuela are not merely legal manoeuvres. It is the reincarnation of colonial discipline, a modern-day sjambok striking the back of a sovereign nation.
To grasp the visceral nature of this event, one must look back to 1870, to a dusty patch of land in Southern Africa. There, Paul Kruger, a Commandant of the Zuid-Afrikaanische Republiek, demanded that Kgosi Kgamanyane of the Bakgatla provide free labour, the “inboekelinge” system, to build a dam at Saulspoort.
When the Kgosi refused to reduce his people to slaves for the Boer infrastructure, Kruger had him tied to an ox-wagon and publicly flogged.
The parallels are as chilling as they are precise. Kruger didn’t just want a dam; he aimed to overthrow a leader who dared to defend the dignity of his people against the demands of a superior military force.
Today, the “dam” is Venezuela’s oil, and the “sjambok” is Operation Absolute Resolve. This US military operation and related coercive instruments also re-silenced Third Worldism by centring a depoliticised global order in which power operates through force, legality and markets.
The US Attorney General’s unsealed indictment in New York may speak of “narco-terrorism”, but Trump’s own words reveal a different goal. At Mar-a-Lago, he was clear: the US will manage a “transition” while American oil firms “fix” the infrastructure. He also claimed that this operation “won’t cost us a penny” because the US would be reimbursed from the “money coming out of the ground”.
This is the “inboekelinge” system for the 21st century. It asserts that a nation’s resources do not belong to its people but to whichever power is strong enough to seize them. Just as Kruger regarded Kgosi Kgamanyane as a rebellious subject rather than a fellow ruler, the MAGA administration has dismissed the concept of Venezuelan sovereignty.
By kidnapping a sitting president and his wife and flying them to New York for trial, the US has signalled that international borders are merely proposals for the militarily weak.
The timing of this colonial reincarnation is deliberate. For nearly 30 years, since Hugo Chávez first nationalised the country’s oil in 1998, Venezuela has been a thorn in the side of the petrodollar system. But the real sin occurred more recently.
Venezuela possesses 18% of the world’s proven oil reserves, the largest globally. In 2017, under pressure from US sanctions, Maduro’s government became an early proponent of the petroyuan, joining China’s effort to de-dollarise global petroleum trade.
By 2025, with China as the world’s leading crude importer and the US dollar facing unprecedented obstacles, the Venezuela situation shifted from just a diplomatic nuisance for Washington to an existential threat to American financial dominance.
Not that Venezuela or China is acting outside the scope, as the credibility of the US dollar has been questioned since the 1960s. For example, French President Charles de Gaulle famously challenged the currency’s structural hegemony under the Bretton Woods system, denouncing it as an “exorbitant privilege”. He argued that this arrangement allowed Washington to finance its deficits by simply printing currency, explaining the current, rampant weaponisation of its UN contributions.
It has long been understood that the US would do everything in its power to protect the dollar, an asset that even China or another country is unlikely to match anytime soon. In this context, the arrest of Maduro sends a message to the BRICS nations and any other power considering abandoning the dollar: We have the ability to enter your territory, apprehend your leader and take control of your resources.
The language of the current occupation is steeped in the same paternalism that defined the “Scramble for Africa”. When Trump boldly says the US will “run the country” because the current structure is “failing and collapsing”, he is using the classic colonial justification of the civilising mission. It is the idea that the “natives” are incapable of managing their wealth and must be supervised by a benevolent overseer.
Yet this benevolence is always transactional, prioritising cooperation over democratic ideals. Trump’s dismissive stance toward Maria Corina Machado, contrasted with his willingness to engage Delcy Rodríguez because she is “willing to do what we think is necessary”, demonstrates that strategic utility, not democratic integrity, is the proper driver of this engagement. It is about control.
Like the puppet rulers installed by colonial administrations of old, the next leader of Venezuela will be chosen based on their willingness to facilitate the extraction of wealth, not their mandate from the Venezuelan people. If there were no lessons learned elsewhere, the recent actions mean the US has just magnified its internal problems.
If we interpret the recent events, including the blindfolds, the noise-cancelling earmuffs on Maduro and the naval warships, the message is clear: the world is governed by raw power. International law, the UN Charter, and the “rules-based order” are the smoke and mirrors that disappear the moment a superpower deems them no longer valid.
The Bakgatla people eventually escaped Kruger’s control, migrating to Mochudi in present-day Botswana to preserve their relative independence. But in an interconnected world, where can a nation run to when the world’s policeman decides to claim its future?
The annexation of Venezuela marks a dark milestone. It is the moment the colonialism toolbox was not just opened, but emptied onto the world stage for all to see. The drone and the indictment have replaced the sjambok, but the sting remains the same.
As we watch Maduro await ‘American Justice’ in a New York cell, we are forced to confront a grim reality: the 19th century never truly ended; it just upgraded its hardware.
* Siyabonga Hadebe is an independent commentator based in Geneva on socio-economic, political and global matters.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.