Memo to President Ramaphosa

Sir,

As you prepare for your trip to America to try and find common ground with President Donald Trump and prevent any further deterioration in our relations with the world’s largest economy (and South Africa’s largest investor), some home truths are necessary.

Fundamentally, to make progress with President Trump, you will need to do more than lipstick the pig. You will instead need to address three glaring policy contradictions, as painful as these may be politically.

There is no other way to improve relations and, in so doing, South Africa’s investment prospects. If this is not the case, you should stay at home and not waste your precious time and taxpayer resources on a trip that will only deepen tensions.

The first is the contradiction between wanting to be accepted as a normal society with normal problems that is dealt with “normally” by investors based on rational analysis and your party’s instinctive belief in South African exceptionalism.

For example, while South Africa requires investment, including from Starlink, the government cannot demand “empowerment” (read race-based) preferences for this and other investments based on South Africa’s apartheid history.

Imposing such conditions on local investors some three decades after apartheid has ended is controversial enough. But asking foreign investors to pony up for another country’s past imbalances is lunacy. Investors, and Elon Musk is not the only one, don’t like it and they stay away. The irony is that these lost investments delay our country’s economic progress, adding to the disempowering force of joblessness.

It’s a schizophrenia between looking backwards and trying to manoeuvre forwards.

This relates to the manner in which South Africa treats its racial minorities. You cannot not condemn slogans such as “Kill the Boer” and then be unhappy when some Afrikaners choose to leave for friendlier climes. Similarly the government cannot say that settlers are undesirable and then be unhappy when they are critical of the government that doesn’t want them around.

This relates to the biggest elephant in the Oval Office: South African foreign policy. While your party (and its media supporters) chose to focus on the issue of white farmers in the White House’s February Executive Order, there was a second dimension to this document on “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa”: “South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.”

A foreign policy shift

The route to remedying this aspect runs through Jerusalem. At the very least, South Africa has to be as concerned (and level criticism accordingly) about human rights violations wherever they occur – whether this be in Tibet over the Uighurs at the hands of Beijing, in Russia’s war in Ukraine, or in countless African conflicts. Just as the West stands accused of diluting human rights by not speaking out more critically over Israeli actions in Gaza, South Africa is only focused on the latter at the expense of much else.

This will also demand engaging with Israel. The South African-instigated case at the International Court of Justice should be suspended. And several other things can happen to rebalance South Africa’s foreign policy.

First, your government has to take a stand on Putin’s war in Ukraine that makes human rights universal and not only applicable to Israel. The same would apply to Hamas, or Iran, or China, or Sudan. Second, you will have to seek ways to strategically normalise relations with Israel. A visit by yourself (or at least international relations and co-operation minister Ronald Lamola) to Israel might be difficult, but an exchange of ambassadors is not, at least not for the Muslim countries that maintain embassies there. Clear, unequivocal condemnation of Hamas atrocities and a clear call to Hamas for the release of hostages is another. And South Africa needs to demonstrate greater restraint in ties with Iran, where your party’s relations are embarrassingly deferential.  

Finally, you should align your (and especially your party’s) rhetoric with your efforts to reinvent the country as a more neutral player. Name-calling and populist sloganeering about “white supremacy”, aside from being simplistic, simply deepen the rift, and invite further controversies such as a focus on the blight of farm murders

All the spit, spin and polish of the Washington safari cannot evade these contradictions.

This is not because of the Israeli lobby, or the Afrikaner one for that matter, no matter how convenient those targets might be to some among your ranks. The problem does not lie abroad; it lies within. It’s because South Africa has blindly blathered away on policy issues at home and overseas believing always in South African exceptionalism and that these obvious paradoxes would remain cost free.

Mr President, that era is now over, perhaps permanently. It would be wise to act accordingly.

This piece originally appeared on Currency News

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