Ramaphosa must restore world relations
After basking in the weekend glory of positive reviews of his inaugural speech, President Cyril Ramaphosa will reply on Tuesday to inputs from opposition parties, which have, broadly, given him the benefit of the doubt to make good on his promises.
By all accounts the speech managed to achieve at least one goal: to mobilise South Africans around the process of rebuilding confidence in their public institutions and economy following the ousting of his predecessor and former boss, Jacob Zuma.
The speech’s key focus was on the domestic policy agenda. Its weakness in prose, which could have kept South Africans longer in the 1990s spirit, was made up for by the businesslike clarity of the medium-term action plans to pull the economy from the brink.
The president now has the opportunity of also addressing the nation on the foreign policy aspirations of his administration. He needs to paint a clear picture of SA’s place in the world of nations and what its national interest is in this, and spell out the role Pretoria wishes to play to achieve a fairer, rules-based international system in an era of protectionism as well as nationalism.
The greatest damage caused by the past administration included harming relations with the world. Relations with SA’s main trading partners — such as the EU, US and the rest of Africa — were neglected, supposedly in favour of the Brics bloc (read Russia and China) and a handful of African countries, especially Angola under Eduardo dos Santos.
Diplomats from the deprioritised countries speak of how long-standing meetings were cancelled at short notice by South African officials.
Barack Obama left office in 2017 frustrated at having failed to achieve much progress in improving relations between the US and SA, especially regarding economic diplomacy.
In the last nine years, China displaced the EU and US as partners to supply the bulk of critical infrastructure, such as locomotives for Transnet.
Thanks to the Gupta leaks e-mails, it is now known that the family brokered most of these deals. According to the testimony of former Prasa CEO Lucky Montana they tried unsuccessfully to direct the passenger rail fleet renewal transactions towards stateowned Chinese rail companies.
Relations with these favoured nations were more personal than strategic country-to-country and people-to-people. Relations with Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, are now almost nonexistent, and this has nothing to do with the health of its president.
Two key factors seem to have driven SA to this point: the absence of a clear foreign policy and, related to this, an apparent lack of interest in foreign policy by the two key diplomats — Zuma and his curious choice for chief diplomat, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.
Without a clear policy, SA’s stance on international issues in world bodies could change three times in one day, depending on who you spoke to. In fact, in other cases SA’s policy stance was a clear violation of the letter and spirit of its Constitution.
Conduct of foreign policy, a complex exercise, was reduced to nothing more than a costly events management business.
One of the casualties of this state of affairs was Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who became the first African woman to chair the AU Commission. But her tour of duty was mired in unnecessary controversy, such as whether most of her office personnel were indeed South Africans or how much time she spent on South African domestic politics versus continental crises such as conflicts and Ebola outbreaks.
Poor communication magnified her missteps.
The consequence of all this is that no South African is likely to receive any backing for a senior leadership position in continental and international bodies for a long time.
Ramaphosa has an opportunity to reset SA’s relations with the rest of the world, as his two other predecessors, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, did during their tenure.
His biggest challenge, though, is to redefine the relationship between China and SA, and Russia and SA. The latter is key in light of the fact that Zuma’s pet project, nuclear energy, has yet to be removed from the table. The intrigue around SA’s relations with Russia has been compounded by reports that Zuma wanted a longer transition so he could introduce Ramaphosa to some of his friends, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Equally important would be ensuring that the Ramaphosa moment translates into mutually beneficial relationships for economic cooperation with SA’s neighbours, especially Zimbabwe, which has just undergone a tricky military- and China-engineered political transition.
Beyond a clear articulation of a foreign policy vision to advance SA’s national interest, Ramaphosa’s key test will be in his choice of foreign affairs minister to replace NkoanaMashabane, and how much time he devotes to championing the vision. The latter point is especially important given the fact that he faces a tough electoral challenge to undo the damage his predecessor did to the governing party’s brand.
BARACK OBAMA LEFT OFFICE FRUSTRATED AT HAVING FAILED TO ACHIEVE MUCH PROGRESS IN IMPROVING RELATIONS BETWEEN THE US AND SA
Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is founder of Orwell Advisory Services.