How to lose friends and irritate people

PWe’re lazy and slow and untidy. It’s not attractive

resident Cyril Ramaphosa was in Kampala on Friday, addressing the 19th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, a body of almost spectacular irrelevance that nonetheless has more members than any organisation short of, I’m pretty sure, the United Nations.

Sticking to the script he has crafted for himself as a leader in the coalescing of a “global south”, he called for the umpteenth time for the West to lift its sanctions against Zimbabwe.

It is an odd cause to go endlessly on about at international gatherings. Western sanctions on Zimbabwe, enacted in response to the appalling way it treats its own citizens, are not that onerous. They target mainly individuals complicit in the theft of elections and other anti-democratic activities. One sanction requires US citizens in top positions in international lending institutions to block credit to Zimbabwe, but it exists on paper alone and is not enforced.

South Africa’s case is driven by the need to stem the influx of Zimbabwean migrants. It seems to feel that while the sanctions are mild, their mere existence puts investors off doing business in Zimbabwe. It completely ignores the fact that South Africa has itself stood by silently and allowed, even encouraged, successive governments in Harare to commit the most outrageous human rights abuses over more than two decades and has defended them on the world stage.

Those missing investors would be Western ones, obviously, and as it becomes clearer where Ramaphosa stands on the New World Order I suspect his calls will continue to be politely ignored. Perhaps he might begin to pitch Zimbabwe to new Brics members like Saudi Arabia and Iran and get them to join the Russians and the Chinese already enjoying Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth. Much more to Harare’s taste.

Why go on like this? Ramaphosa may have been encouraged to overestimate his, or South Africa’s, standing with the West — Washington has seemed to step away from confrontation over the Russian ship Lady R and our participation in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), the US trade bridge for selected African countries.

But that’s not because Ramaphosa is so cunningly charming and persuasive. It’s in large part been pure luck because President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, the most senior political appointee in the White House, is Jeff Zients. He literally runs Biden’s life inside the Oval Office and was a senior figure in the Barack Obama administration.

For the past 30 years Zients has been married to Joburgborn Mary Menell. One of Mary’s brothers is Rick Menell, a familiar and popular figure in South African public life and a business figure close to Ramaphosa. Last year, when the president sent a team to Washington to lobby for our continued membership of Agoa, Menell went with them.

No-one outside the US has Menell-level access to the White House. On more than one occasion Biden, as president, has publicly plugged TechMet, a mining investor run by Brian Menell, Mary and Rick’s brother. If Biden loses to Donald Trump in November, that access will be lost.

Then what? The only South African Trump takes seriously is Gary Player, now 88. The golfer is the only non-American Trump follows on X (Twitter). Useful to know — but while an appeal to Player’s patriotism might work in an emergency, it wouldn’t be smart to rely on it.

French President Emmanuel Macron is unfailingly polite to Ramaphosa, but even his eyes are starting to glaze over as he invites our leader to contribute to this or that gathering. I’ve watched closely. He knows what’s coming.

Beyond Biden and Macron the Western friends are dwindling.

Ramaphosa’s best strategy to get heard is to run a smarter government and to get things done. Go and earn us some respect. Right now even “allies” like China stare at their shoes when we come up. We’re lazy and slow and untidy. It’s not attractive.

But two years of forceful government, leading reform from the front rather than shepherding all and sundry from behind, would do Cyril no end of good.

My guess is he’ll still be president after the coming elections, with a smaller parliamentary majority. Would he then press harder for real reform? Get the state further out of business? Fire Gwede Mantashe? Perhaps just get SAA off the books?

I doubt it. If he gets back into office I fear we’ll just get more of the same fiddling, ducking and diving and, when abroad, playing the victim. Sorry. I know how depressing this is all going to be. But like I’ve said in the past, the ANC is apartheid’s parting gift to us. And it’s sticky.