Obama’s man in SA upbeat on relations

PATRICK GASPARD, the US ambassador to South Africa since 2013, chose the Daily Dispatch as his first port of call when he arrived in the Eastern Cape on Wednesday.

Gaspard flew in en route to Mthatha to attend a private memorial ceremony for the US, Idaho-born South African struggle nun, sister Mary Paule Tacke, who was cut down a year ago at age 82, allegedly by two violent young men now on trial for murder, kidnap and robbery with aggravating circumstances.

Born in Kinshasa, Gaspard, 48, is a former New York trade unionist who soared to political heights to direct the Democratic Party's national committee from 2011 to 2013 and ran US President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.

It was just after 7.30am on Wednesday. We had just ended a “brutal” (his description) interview in the Daily Dispatch’s building in Caxton Street.

This powerful American politician had come across as smart, well-prepared and unassuming.

We were walking down the wooden stairs, climbed famously by 1970’s black consciousness icon Steve Biko and former Dispatch editor Donald Woods, when Gaspard commented that he was surprised at the likeness of the architecture captured in Richard Attenborough’s 1987 classic movie, Cry Freedom, starring Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline.

Seemingly Gaspard pays attention to detail.

He is also able to switch track with ease. Minutes earlier he had been upbeat, elaborating on a deal cut in Paris last weekend to allow US chicken to be imported into South African after 15 years of prevention by tariff barriers. He quips: “You will be coming to my place for a braai soon. We will have US chicken, pork and beef on the braai soon. We are going to have a good ol’ time. You bring the wine.”

South African-US economic relations are his passion and he says it was “fantastic” to have reached consensus on the imports.

This kind of political interaction will have what he describes as a “net positive impact” for South African consumers, especially those in the Eastern Cape who he feels will benefit most from cheaper imported meat.

But he says the Obama administration is hostile to old-style transnational corporate exploitation. “We need to choose our US partners very carefully,” he notes. US corporations need to come to this country with a package of social programmes that will train black South Africans. This is evidenced by the agricultural experts who will be coming as part of the chicken deal, and black students who will be given scholarships to study agriculture in the US.

This means other benefits for South Africa in much-needed transformation in the poultry industry. And with black players participating in poultry, he sees more jobs being created. “This will be great for workers,” says the former trade unionist who, in his younger days, represented workers in most US states.

Gaspard also sees a future for smallholder black farmers in the Eastern Cape, a province from which he notes, “so many heroes of struggle have emerged” and where so many leaders have been nurtured.

But this is, he says, “ironically juxtaposed with levels of economic despair, which struggles with unemployment and has a deficit of skills capacity”.

“We all need to develop young people (in the province),” he says.

While financial troubles have been predicted with US interest rates set to rise and capital expected to vacate emerging markets and head home for higher yields, Gaspard has a different outlook.

He speaks of the top US corporation CEOs who have visited South Africa in the last few months, listing the CEOs of General Electric, IBM and Goldman Sacks, as well as top US administrators from treasury and transport.

“They are coming to lift the hood and poke around, and they are liking what they are seeing.”

This US economic and political interest in South Africa is a concrete follow-up to “the amazing, dynamic gathering” in Washington DC in August last year where an “unprecedented” 48 African heads of state attend sub-Saharan-US talks convened by Obama.

The talks focused on health care, trade, regional peace, security and building opportunities for the next generation. But while the US CEOs and administrators who visited our shores were “wowed by the resilience and and ambitions they found among young people”, they were also perplexed at why a country with such impressive “physical infrastructure appears to lag in growth”, and is in the throes of an “energy (Eskom) crisis”.

Nevertheless South Africa continues to receive special focus from US corporations. He sees a maturing of economic links with South Africa, which enjoys 19% of US trade with sub-Saharan Africa.

Gaspard says this country is one of only a handful in the world to have an IBM research laboratory – to be established in Johannesburg.

There will also be action from General Electric in the redevelopment of SA railways.

The problem is that “there is nothing harder than to galvanise the public imagination around public infrastructure. For years we still can't get high-speed rail (in the US)”.

But he sees advantages in the envisioned collaboration with General Electric and other corporations keen to “transform supply chain in South Africa”. As is the case with the poultry deal, incoming US corporations will have to come with a training model to create skills transfers.

He highlights engineering as key. “Every company coming to invest in South Africa should be compelled to invest in the next level of South African engineers and senior managers.”

He lapses into a favourite anecdote about Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in a conference call with economic reporters. In response to a sceptical question about his interest in “philanthropic work” with developing markets in sub-Saharan Africa, Gaspard says Zuckerberg retorted: “Well it matters – the kind of investors we want to have.”

Gaspard says this goes to the “ethos and culture of companies. We must care about the kind of investor partners we want – the kind of CEOs who care about the next generation of young South Africans”.

Asked for his views on the Marikana report sitting with President Jacob Zuma, Gaspard referred to his early days, to his “history as a trade unionist” and his first visit to South Africa in the heady postMandela release days of 1991 when he was struck by the conditions of mine workers. “It was difficult to come back after true participatory democracy had been in place in South Africa for 20 years and to see that mineworkers continue to toil and work hard and do not have all they deserve in housing, wages and benefits.”

While the Marakana report is “internal” to the South African government, Gaspard is “encouraged and heartened” by South Africa’s open, free and transparent social culture, and especially its “muscular media”. He finds hope in “a robust civil society” and at a recent civil society gathering in Johannesburg was “really excited to see that it is not just grey beards that play in these issues, but a new generation of South Africans is saying that tough questions have to be asked”.

At a biannual Aids conference on Tuesday, following the epiphanous 2000 global Aids conference in Durban where civil activists had attacked Aids denialism, he was “excited to see a young sister from the Treatment Action Campaign” challenge government saying that if it was not part of the health care solution it had to “move out of the way”.

Gaspard enjoyed how Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was sitting beside him at the event, went up to the podium and gave an “unflinching” response.

Gaspard sees South Africa and the US sharing “great institutions, with fantastic creeds, with civil society determined to live up to those creeds”. “Civil society is alive and well in South Africa,” Gaspard said.

Asked if he was aware of ISIS recruiting militants in Port Elizabeth earlier this year, he said the US was pleased with the level of cooperation and partnership with South Africa’s armed forces and security agencies, which includes joint exercises and “interaction” around violent extremist organisations.

“We have good open intelligence sources between us,” he said, praising South Africa for its “commendable role” in ensuring regional peace and security.

However, he said the two countries could not “rest on our laurels” when it came to ISIS gaining a foothold on sub-Saharan soil.

Finally, he admits to being “pretty biased” towards Obama and says the US is showing year-on-year job growth, with unemployment standing at only 5.5%.

He says these economic gains, under the Obama administration, were being translated into relations with South Africa, including more resources being made available for investment, and Africa receiving more foreign direct investment (FDI), which was a “huge deal”.

“Obama has been a great fan of South Africa, as you can tell from his two visits – for bilateral talks and for Nelson Mandela’s funeral.”

Through a young leadership initiative and Nelson Mandela fellowships, he said the US was “investing in young people and next generation of Bikos, Tambos, and Mandelas”. — mikel@dispatch.co.za