Obama’s man in Mzansi
US ambassador says SA is close to his heart, writes Bianca Capazorio
HE has travelled the world and dined at the White House, so there is little that surprises Patrick Gaspard, US ambassador to South Africa. Except South Africa’s mopane worms, that is.
Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and raised in Haiti before moving to the US, Gaspard, 46, has been in South Africa for five months, during which time he has been offered the fat caterpillars that get their name from the mopane tree on which they feed.
And although he has turned them down three times, he says the fourth time may be the charm.
“It’s gonna happen. But I wanna do it in a dramatic fashion, where there are lots of folks around,” he said during an interview in Cape Town.
Apart from the occasional worm being offered to him, Gaspard said, he and his family were settling in so well that his two teenaged children, Indigo and Cybele, had already conquered the local slang.
Gaspard attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and then Columbia University, but he left early to focus on politics.
He cut his political teeth on Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1988 and worked on several campaigns before becoming a trade unionist with one of the biggest health unions in the US.
He was political director for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign and led the committee overseeing his re-election four years later. Before coming to South Africa, he was an assistant to the president and headed up the office of political affairs.
He has been referred to as “one of the best political minds of his generation” and, until moving to South Africa, tended to shun the spotlight, working quietly in the background of several high-profile political careers.
He had never served in the diplomatic corps when he was recommended for the post of ambassador by Obama, but he has had a connection to the country since his days as a young struggle activist.
“South Africa has long occupied a central place in my political development,” Gaspard testified at a US Congressional hearing before he was appointed to the post.
He visited South Africa in 1990 and was involved in Nelson Mandela’s first visit to the US after his release.
It was in New York where Gaspard met Mandela, who asked him for a glass of water. A little starstruck, it took him a few moments to register the request.
Gaspard said Mandela’s death had been the single biggest challenge of his time in South Africa.
“We knew that we were going to have major logistics to contend with with President Barack Obama, three former presidents, 20 members of Congress and luminaries like Oprah Winfrey descending on our front porch for that moment.
“It was a great challenge for all 1 100 members of the embassy.”
Following Mandela’s death, Gaspard returned to Soweto, where he again heard the songs he had not heard since his first visit to the Regina Mundi church in Rockville.
He said Soweto had developed a bigger middle class in the years since his first visit there.
“Now you can see all the progress and the challenges of South Africa cheek to cheek in that township.”
Asked about the controversial selfie taken at Mandela’s memorial service of Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle ThorningSchmidt, Gaspard said: “President Obama made a speech at FNB Stadium that was tremendously well received across the globe. I think for many people who care about democracy, who care about justice and who care about equality, that speech, I dare say, is one that will resonate through the ages.”
But as someone who has had his fair share of online controversy and has been in Twitter wars — he once tweeted “It’s Constitutional Bitches” after the US Constitutional Court upheld the ObamaCare law, he knows the pitfalls and strengths of social media. He knows it can be used for good, and imagines what it would have been like to have Twitter to organise Martin Luther King’s march on Washington in 1963.
An ardent comic-book fan, Gaspard takes his stance from the character Uncle Ben in Spider-Man. “With great power comes great responsibility,” he quoted.
His focus in South Africa is now on bilateral relations between the two countries.
But, he said, there was some “trepidation” from many of the 600 US investors in South Africa”.
“They tell me they are absolutely challenged when they try to convince their headquarters back in the States to increase investment, because of the uncertainty that exists with the labour force and the perennial strike season and with some legislation that is currently before parliament,” said Gaspard.
“As somebody who has had to look into the eyes of workers on the eve of taking the strike vote, who has walked picket lines and who has had to make some really, really tough calls that I knew, in the short term, could have some negative impact on the lives of workers and their communities in the hope they could improve their circumstances in the long run, I always viewed the strike tool as an option that you employ after you’ve exhausted all other options.
“In the time I’ve been in South Africa, I’ve seen a number of work actions that appear to me were taken long before serious transparent conversations were had,” he said.