The Moped and the Freight Train: South Africa’s Foreign Agonies

In an article published last week by Foreign Policy, he joined Colombia’s populist president Gustavo Petro, Malaysia’s prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla of Progressive International, the chair of the Hague Group – none of them mainstream international leaders − in reinforcing SA’s stance on Israel.

This Group, they write, was launched by them alongside Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, and Namibia “as a coalition committed to taking decisive, coordinated action in pursuit of accountability for Israel’s crimes”. Far from keeping his head down, Ramaphosa is leading the charge on an issue that Washington has already singled out South Africa over.

“Our governments will comply with the warrants issued by the ICC against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, emphasising appropriate, fair, and independent investigations and prosecutions at the national or international level; we will prevent vessels carrying military supplies to Israel from using our ports; and we will prevent all arms transfers that risk enabling further violations of humanitarian law,” wrote Ramaphosa and his fellow authors

To be absolutely sure to alienate the already scratchy Trump, the article describes his plans regarding Gaza as “ethnic cleansing” which “strikes at the very foundation of international law”.

The lack of strategic foresight with which Ramaphosa is acting is underscored by his statement to a meeting of investors hosted by Goldman Sachs the same week at which he said “we’ve got to make a deal of one sort or another, on trade issues, on diplomatic issues, on political issues, a whole span of issues”.

Disconnect

This disconnect between an all-out assault on Trump and the desire to make a deal with him indicates that Ramaphosa continues to make up foreign policy as he goes along.

Ramaphosa also said that Washington has “got the wrong end of the stick” on the country’s land policies.

But this is wrong in two respects. The Executive Order put out by Trump on 7 February freezing aid to South Africa stated clearly that this was both about land and the direction Pretoria has taken in its foreign relations. Instead of de-emphasising this aspect, Ramaphosa has now deliberately highlighted the latter difference in Foreign Policy, not least since he has written it with openly anti-Israeli figures. Additionally, Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president, is an apologist for the Maduro regime in next-door Venezuela, which has recently slipped into the Trump administration’s crosshairs.

It is not unrealistic to think that this surge of interest in South Africa’s foreign relations is driven, too, by intelligence on which the Biden administration was sitting, including SA’s relations with Iran. Perhaps even they really know what happened with the Lady R?

And South Africa’s land debate is clearly not done, contrary to Ramaphosa’s protestations: why mention race in the context of an expropriation bill unless you intend to act on this? The Act seeks to assist marginalised communities and in line with Section 25(8) of the Constitution “to redress the results of past racial discriminatory laws or practices”.

Armoury

And then there was the notice given this week by the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mzwanele Nyhontso, that the government intends to add the “Equitable Access to Land Bill” to its armoury of land legislation.

Among its proposed provisions is the legislation of a ceiling on land ownership, land tribunals and regulations. The “ceiling” on ownership would adversely affect large-scale commercial farming, which is the backbone of South Africa’s global competitiveness, and lead to the subdivision of land into less economically competitive units.

The decision to throw this controversial log onto the fire while claiming that you are trying to put it out illustrates the government’s anarchic policy making.

Both the article and the schizophrenic attempts to downplay the differences with Washington over foreign policy speak to ANC hubris. The party believes it is a giant on the world stage that can dictate terms in international politics while it is, in fact, a price-taker that must navigate a shrinking economy through a world full of surprising threats.

For a long time the foreign arena has proved a cost-free arena for the ANC to proffer its radical credentials in, and a means to obscure lacklustre domestic performance: little or no growth since 2008, decimation of the country’s mining and industrial sector, record-level unemployment, and, worst of all, a rap sheet of stolen funds from the fiscus conservatively estimated at R250 billion by the late finance minister, Pravin Gordan.

The total stolen through state capture under Jacob Zuma is reckoned to be five times higher, a crime for which no one has yet gone to jail.

If one adds in the numbers of civil servants who have jobs but do no work (including all bar the 2,500 “combat effectives” of the 75,000 in the Defence Force, for example), this figure would rise to levels that would make a version of Elon Musk’s DOGE seem long overdue.

Canny game

The ANC played a canny game in foreign affairs before 1994 in isolating the apartheid regime. Of course, it was helped immeasurably by the indefensible nature of its opponent. Perhaps now, in a delusional flashback, it believes that it can force a fight with Washington and that if AGOA is scrapped and sanctions are imposed, it can shift the blame abroad for its terrible domestic record and falling support.

Perhaps Cyril is pushing and niggling Washington to try and appeal to Trump’s art of the deal instincts. But poking a bear with a little stick is a risky business, as bears get grumpy quickly and can hurt. The Israeli lobby is unlikely to let this one slide.

Put differently, President Ramaphosa is playing a game of chicken mounted on a moped against a freight train. But when it doesn’t end well, and AGOA is shredded and tariffs imposed, you can be certain of one thing: he will not accept the blame any more than he owned up to the money in his couch.

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