Germany’s tactful mediator
After finishing his second stint as ambassador to SA, Martin Schäfer reflects on the issues he has taken up, some contentious and some pleasant, writes Caiphus Kgosana
It’s the morning after Germany’s shock defeat to England at the Euros when I meet outgoing ambassador Martin Schäfer at his exquisite residence in the Pretoria suburb of Waterkloof. We sit on the front porch overlooking a beautifully manicured garden and engage in light banter about the German national coach destroying his great legacy.
Schäfer was finishing his second stint as ambassador to SA but this is our first proper engagement. I had met him at the launch of Themba Maseko’s book, For My Country ,a few weeks earlier when he told me he was being posted elsewhere. We exchanged several messages before agreeing on a date for a sit-down exit interview.
As tea and biscuits are served, I ask about his long ties with SA.
Schäfer served his first term between
July 2007 and April 2011 before leaving to take up a position as spokesperson of the foreign office in his home country.
He came back to SA six years later for a second stint, which ended last month. When he first arrived in 2007, one of his assignments was monitoring domestic politics, and in December of that year he found himself at the Polokwane conference where Jacob Zuma was set to oust Thabo Mbeki as president of the ANC.
“In a sense, the span of my two terms here over 14 years covers the rise and fall of Jacob Zuma,” he notes.
He says the international community was surprised but respected the ANC’s decision to elect Zuma, despite his well-publicised shortcomings. “It was known in the ANC that JZ had issues with money and women. He was elected on a wave of support from the alliance partners. No-one foresaw what was to come.”
The conversation soon moves to trade. Our countries have long-standing historical ties. Germany was SA’s biggest trade partner until 10 years ago, when it was overtaken by China. Trade between Europe’s largest economy and Africa’s most industrialised country still amounts to an impressive R250bn annually. German car manufacturers based in SA account for 9% of our exports.
Schäfer says that unlike other countries, Germany has deliberately avoided former colonial trade relations wherein SA exports raw materials and imports finished products.
“The traditional colonial trade patterns are that a country like South Africa would export primary resources in return for cheap industrial products with the value added in the country where the primary resources were sent to. That was the trade relations between UK and South Africa for very long on mining products.
“If you look at trade patterns with other countries you would see a replication of exactly that. There is export of mining products without a lot of value added, and what you get back is cheap T-shirts, for example, which have destroyed the South African textile industry.”
The German approach focuses on setting up manufacturing hubs in this country, which in turn produce finished hi-tech products that are exported to Europe and other parts of the world.
“What we find important is to have South Africa be part of our international multilateral supply chains and to have South Africa become a hub for the export of hitech products. That is why 10 years ago the German business community decided, together with the government, to make a strategic and structural effort to achieve just that, and in fact the results are spectacular.”
In June, Mercedes-Benz announced that it was injecting an additional R3bn into a R10bn investment to produce the newgeneration C-Class at its plant in East London.
The vehicles are produced for the export market.
However, Schäfer says there is growing anxiety in his home country over the level of protection of investments in SA — because the South African government had cancelled a bilateral agreement entered into during the apartheid era, which guaranteed protection to German investors.
When that agreement was cancelled, the government promised to enact a new law that would guarantee similar protections, but this was never enacted.
“German investors are concerned that the level of protection of investments in South Africa has declined over the past 10 years.”
The international community has also been observing the protracted process to introduce a policy of expropriation of land without compensation. However, it is not overly concerned since there is no indication in the draft law that industrial assets would be expropriated.
Even so, smaller and medium-sized German companies keen to explore opportunities to set up operations here are uneasy about redress laws that force them to partner with or offer equity stakes to marginalised groups. “For
[such] companies, it’s very hard to swallow to be told that if you want to invest you have to renounce full ownership of your subsidiary.”
Schäfer says many of these companies are family-owned businesses that are discouraged by such laws, hence their decision to take their business elsewhere.
The world is also watching SA’s energy crisis and battling to understand why the country has been unable to resolve it for the past 14 years. Schäfer says the power crisis is a massive opportunity for SA to position itself as a world leader in green energy, especially through the use of solar and wind power, natural resources which are abundant here.
Germany, which is willing to partner with SA on this energy transition journey, needs hydrogen energy but cannot produce enough to meet demand at home. This is an opportunity for companies such as Sasol and Eskom, which are world leaders in the production of green hydrogen, to assume a leading role. Hydrogen exports will create jobs in SA, says Schäfer.
“The government must take bold decisions towards energy transition. This can solve your problems, and South Africa can even become a net exporter of energy.”
Schäfer understands that an energy transition is not an easy process as there are winners and losers, but political compromises have to be made when it comes to coal jobs threatened by a green energy future.
As Covid continues to ravage countries that are slow to vaccinate, there have been growing calls for intellectual property protections to be waived to allow the developing world to produce vaccines for their populations. SA and India are cosignatories to a World Trade Organisation resolution that proposes a temporary waiver of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which would make it possible for patents to be shared so countries that have capacity can produce vaccines on home soil for their own citizens and others in need.
Germany is opposed to a TRIPS waiver, preferring instead an approach that guarantees faster vaccine rollout in Africa and the rest of the developing world. The country insists on protecting patents belonging to its pharmaceutical companies.
“Germany is convinced that the availability of patents is not an impediment to vaccine production in Africa. We are working hard with South Africa on that, we are confident that vaccine production in South Africa for the rest of Africa can be increased and is something that is in the interests of both governments.”
But our people are dying of Covid as the West hoards vaccines, I protest.
The EU is not hoarding vaccines, he interjects. The bloc has exported vaccines to India and other parts of the world where there are shortages.
“Europe has exported more vaccines than anyone else; the criticism is not founded.”
Schäfer was central to negotiations that culminated in an agreement for Pfizer and BioNTech to start producing their Covid vaccine at a facility in Cape Town run by local vaccine manufacturer Biovac. The agreement had not been finalised at the time of our interview and Schäfer couldn’t talk about it openly. An announcement was made shortly after he left SA.
As a long-serving diplomat who has closely observed SA’s development, he is excited to see positive movements after the state capture era.
This includes the cleaning up of compromised state institutions and commitments to upholding the rule of law. At the time of our interview, the Constitutional Court had just confirmed a 15-month sentence on Zuma for contempt of court over his refusal to appear before the commission of inquiry into state capture.
Asked to comment on this development, Schäfer says it is important for SA to reestablish the rule of law.
“It is not up to me to make comments about very concrete developments and decisions. But what I can see is the international community as well as South Africans, [who are] for the re-establishment of the rule of law, wanted to see people take responsibility for what was done during state capture. This seems to be part and parcel of that development.”
Despite episodes where SA had to undertake two difficult commissions — the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and the Zondo commission — to establish truths and heal wounds, he praises the country for remaining an important beacon of hope for the world.
“South Africa has lived too long on its resilience and reserves. It has huge potential to be the peaceful and prosperous nation it has strived to be since 1994. It has every opportunity to remain the beacon of hope it has become.”
But Germany has also had to answer for its own brutal history in Southern Africa. The country has agreed to pay Namibia €1.1bn (about R19bn) as it finally recognises the Herero-Nama genocide at the beginning of the 20th century. This would not be cash but development aid over the next 30 years to improve health care, infrastructure and water supply, and for land reform projects.
Thousands of men, women and children were shot, tortured or driven into the Kalahari desert to starve by German troops between 1904 and 1908 after the Herero and Nama rebelled against colonial rule in what was then German South West Africa.
Germany has been negotiating with Namibia since 2015 in an attempt to “heal the wounds”, but refuses to describe the overture as “reparations”.
Schäfer says Germany is not offering reparations but assuming responsibility for what happened.
“Germany is willing to acknowledge that between 1904 and 1908, as a colonial power at the time, [it] committed heinous crimes and that it continues to sense responsibility for what happened and its consequences. The approach was a bilateral one; we wanted to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the government of Namibia and whoever they invited to this dialogue to share our experiences about the painful past.”
While the text of the joint declaration calls the atrocities committed by German troops a “genocide”, it omits the words “reparations” or “compensation” out of fear that such language could set a legal precedent for similar claims from other nations.
Schäfer says Germany has not committed to financial reparations because the HereroNama killings did not occur during a period defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
As he leaves the country to prepare for his next diplomatic posting, to France, I ask what it is that he will miss.
A keen runner, one of his memorable moments was participating in a halfmarathon at Skukuza in the Kruger National Park in 2019.
He will especially miss running through the streets of Pretoria and Cape Town or enjoying lunch at Jonkershuis, a favourite restaurant in Groot Constantia with panoramic views of the vineyards.
German investors are concerned that the level of protection of investments in SA has declined over the past 10 years
SA has huge potential to be the peaceful and prosperous nation it has strived to be since 1994