When you try to please everyone …

ONCE upon a time, there was a miller who lived in a little house beside his mill. All day long, he worked hard but, at night, he went home to his wife and his boy.

So begins the fable, The Miller, His Son and the Donkey, written by Aesop, a Greek storyteller who lived more than 2 500 years ago.

According to the tale, one day, the miller and his son took their donkey to the market to sell it.

Initially, they walked alongside the animal because they did not want to tire it out by riding it.

Along the way, they met a variety of people who took issue with every decision they made. But to please everyone, they did as they were told.

When someone suggested one of them ride the animal, the miller put his son on the donkey’s back.

When someone criticised the boy for riding while his father walked, the miller hopped on and let his son walk. When someone criticised him for letting his young child walk, he pulled the boy onto the animal with him.

When someone said the two of them were too heavy for the animal, they decided to carry the donkey. They tied its legs, slung the donkey on a pole and carried it on their shoulders.

Not surprisingly, the donkey was not pleased. It struggled to break free and finally did. The animal tried to escape by jumping into a river but it drowned.

The moral of the story was that if you try to please everyone, you will please nobody. It is a lesson our government should heed.

We have done our best to maintain relations with America and Russia but it’s quickly becoming clear that both sides are getting frustrated with us.

A month ago, Kamala Harris made her first visit to Africa as the vice president of America. She visited Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia. South Africa was not on her itinerary and it was a clear indication that we are no longer on America’s radar.

This Friday, the G7 leaders will meet in Japan. They are: the US, the UK, the EU, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the host, Japan.

Some nine other countries, among them Brazil, India and Ukraine, have also been invited. But South Africa, a country that regularly attended G7 meetings, has been excluded.

Most recently, Reuben Brigety II, the American ambassador to South Africa, accused South Africa of supplying weapons to Russia. It’s not the kind of thing ambassadors do and underlies the increasingly tense relationship between South Africa and America.

Meanwhile, it seems as though the Russians are also getting fed up with us.

In August this year, South Africa will host the 15th get together of leaders from BRICS which includes Brazil, Russia, India and China.

South Africa is in a dilemma because the International Criminal Court has issued an international arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. As a member of the ICC, South Africa is obliged to arrest Putin.

However, no one would want to arrest Putin because the Russians have made it clear that any such arrest would be seen as an act of war. And nobody would want to go to war with a country that boasts the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet.

We also have a historic link with Russia (as part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) because they supported our struggle for liberation.

According to media reports, the Russians have made it clear that Putin will attend, and he will do so in person.

Put differently, they have zero sympathy with South Africa trying to be friends with everyone.

And so, as things stand, we’ve become the donkey Aesop wrote about – a lifeless body drifting aimlessly in a river at the mercy of everything and everyone.