Diplomatic encounters of the difficult kind
SAlmost all our ambassadors are now ANC party hacks in well-paid sinecures. Ramaphosa put most of them there. It’s patronage
uddenly there’s a burst of American interest in SA. Secretary of state Antony Blinken was in SA last month. Now President Cyril Ramaphosa is going to Washington to meet President Joe Biden in a few weeks. A summit! Blinken must have delivered the invitation personally.
You can see the point on both sides. The Americans would have been stung by SA’s refusal to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March and there is a lot riding (for us) on removing the sting. They are a key part of the consortium of European and UK promises to lend SA $8.5bn to help us move from coal-fired power to renewables in line with our international pledges to do so.
There was a time after the Russian invasion when it was feared the money might go away. It hasn’t yet, but there is legislation brewing in Congress to punish countries, like us, which did not condemn the invasion. International relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor had a go at poor Blinken when he was here, telling him sharply that she would not be bullied.
Actually, she may strike poses, but she would, if push came to shove, do what she was told. As would Ramaphosa. Americans have huge investments in SA, particularly in technology and the motor industry. They control access to funding from the World Bank and the IMF, which we are increasingly making use of.
The fact that they don’t bully us is good manners. We should be grateful we remain a recipient of US trade largesse through Agoa . If Biden loses the election in 2024 to either Donald Trump or the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, US diplomacy could change dramatically for the worse for us.
For the moment, Washington still sees strategic advantage in SA even though we have done our best to destroy the things that once made us a viable partner — our ports don’t work, our politics are increasingly unstable, we have virtually no military capability, and the ruling party is unable to break with its ideological affinity with stale 1960s communism.
They will see Ramaphosa coming. Suddenly weakened by scandal, he is barely able to govern with purpose. He is in charge but unable to influence events. Promised infrastructure projects are slow to get off the ground, if at all. Renewable energy project financing is hard to find.
Politically, he is (probably) on safe ground as he approaches re-election as leader of the ANC in
December, but recent polling shows even there he is on a slippery slope. Polling for the
Social Research Foundation shows him regarded somewhat or very favourably by 49% of all registered voters, and by 66% of ANC voters.
This latest poll, conducted by Victory Research, suggests, not unreasonably in politics, a decline in favourability from the 56% and 71% recorded in a slightly smaller poll done last year for Media24. Polling by Victory in 2019 had Ramaphosa’s favourability score at 61% of all voters, so his decline over time is significant. But, as yet, not terminal.
The same may go for his party and the Americans will be careful not to write him off. Certainly, they will be alarmed at the possibility that he could be taken out by the theft of undeclared cash at a game farm he owns and then by the appalling prospect of one of his rivals getting the top job.
The second-most favourably viewed politician in the country after Ramaphosa, ahead of John Steenhuisen, Julius Malema or Herman Mashaba, is Jacob Zuma. But the US will be keeping a sharp eye on the other horses in the South African race too. And where, they will want to know, is business putting its money?
It’s a good question. Of all the actors in our body politic, business is the most rational. Arguably, it should be seeking out a role just as it did under apartheid when the South Africa Foundation opened offices in London and Washington to actively try to influence international attitudes towards SA.
Our country is represented in Washington by ambassador Nomaindia Mfeketo, a former mayor of Cape Town and briefly minister of human settlements under Ramaphosa. Given a woeful record at home, not much can be expected of her in Washington.
It is when Ramaphosa has to travel abroad to explain why SA is in the state it is and behaves the way it does, that he will learn how poor our diplomatic representation abroad is. He will probably not care. Almost all our ambassadors are now ANC party hacks in well-paid sinecures. Ramaphosa put most of them there. It’s patronage, pretty much the only politics that still works for him.