“So, as a South African, what do you make of the American election?” asked a Canadian guy I’d known two decades ago during my time in Taiwan, and with whom I had a nodding reconnection over Facebook. I generally eschew commenting on foreign matters – with a couple of exceptions – but since this asked for a specifically national perspective, I thought I’d pen some thoughts.
I obviously haven’t been alone in this one. As is the general pattern following an American election, the earnestly asked questions about “the implications for South Africa” is one with many takers in the commentariat. To an extent, this reflects the complex relationship that our chattering classes have with the US. There is both an obsessive preoccupation with America – an aspirational admiration – and a dreadful parochialism; a sense almost of participation in its politics, while refracting them through South Africa’s own. I’ve followed this with mild interest and a sense of predictability over 30 years: invariably, incoming Republican presidents are regarded with suspicion if not outright scorn, Democrats with some generosity. For the most part, I don’t find it convincing.
The past election has driven this pattern into overdrive. It’s hardly controversial to say that Donald Trump is a divisive figure; the adverse reactions among many Americans, particularly those styling themselves “progressive” (in one way or another) has its exact replication here. A connection or comparison to Donald Trump has for years been a general-purpose journalistic condemnation. When a campaign was being run against the IRR in 2021, this was an invariable line of attack, though exactly what we were doing that was “Trumpian” was never properly specified.
I suppose, I need to put in an obligatory disclaimer. I didn’t like either candidate. I imagine that there were many American voters who entered their polling stations holding their noses, and – had I been an American – I would have done likewise. I was quite impressed by JD Vance, though much of that derived from having read his book, Hillbilly Elegy long before he was on any ballot. I found Trump crude, undisciplined and off-putting – and badly compromised by his refusal to accept the outcome of the previous election – and Kamala Harrs to be an utterly awful candidate. She had no charisma, no ability to speak from the stump, was a shockingly bad communicator (she stuffed everything with the same set of adjectives to kill time), and while she had a big manifesto, she didn’t put much of substance across that I could see.
I am neither a “Trump supporter” nor a “Harris supporter”; they’re wholly ridiculous notions when one has no entitlement to vote in that country. I followed the campaign fairly closely, and came away with the belief that there were a great many issues on the table, and how one chose among them would inform one’s choice of candidate. That in turn had to do with one’s personal circumstances and aspirations. How I might would have voted would have depended on those factors, and how I might have seen my own interests from my own vantage point.
I am inclined to think that what we saw was the triumph of a fundamentally class-based appeal rather than an identitarian one. For this, I am indebted to the insights of Victor Davis Hanson and Batya Ungar-Sargon (largely via Bari Weiss’ platform, The Free Press) – very compelling and highly recommended indeed, although as in all commentary they have their angles with which one might disagree.
I was deeply disappointed by the coverage of the election in most South African media. There was a marked tendency to moralise and editorialise rather than to report on the campaign. The “Letter from DC”, by Daily Maverick’s on-the-ground correspondent, Philip Van Niekerk, was a particularly egregious example of this. Frankly, his writing was a triumph of preconceptions of what ought to be over whatever the evidence might suggest. Readers were invited to share a sense of smug indignation, but they were left uninformed. Smirking and “refusing to believe” are not reliable journalistic techniques. There are lessons here, should there be any appetite for heeding them.
South Africa’s government seems to have been less phased by Trump’s election than many of the country’s thought leaders. Kudos to them for that. Sort of, at least. Clayson Monyela, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) head of public diplomacy and omnipresent wordsmith – he who could describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine so as to omit such details as the fact that it was the Russian military that was on Ukrainian real estate – even went on to social media to declare that relations thrived under Republican presidents and that Trump had previously appointed an amazing ambassador in the form of Lana Marks. This was swiftly removed. Some might suggest that its removal pointed to a background hostility to the Republicans, though my own interpretation is that it was rowing back another ill-judged comment from within a rudderless bureaucracy. Publicly praising a foreign political party over others is, after all, impolitic. Sometimes. In this case there are presumably many among South Africa’s political principals who do harbour a visceral hatred of the Republicans (which does not preclude a visceral hatred of the US as well, which we’ll get to shortly). This is the same department, remember, that responded to the aforementioned invasion by calling on Russian to withdraw from Ukraine, then cancelled that call. (Maybe “Special Military Operations” are okay, who knows? I doubt the department does.)
I suspect that’s an immediate problem. However this phase of the US-South Africa relationship plays out, South Africa is not well served by its diplomatic corps and foreign affairs bureaucracy. The National Development Plan raised questions about the effectiveness and return on investment of the country’s large diplomatic presence abroad. Sporadically, the issue has arisen over and over again, in relation to South Africa’s failure to try and take advantage of the UK’s departure from the European Union, and the failure of its diplomatic representatives to make their presence felt over the vexed question of Expropriation without Compensation. (Note and disclosure: there wasn’t much that South Africa’s diplomatic corps could have said to soft-soap the message that the government was planning to abridge property protections, nor anything they could have done to make this course of action any less disastrous. The point, though, is that by all accounts, they weren’t particularly engaged in trying. In my own experience, much of this was left to the country’s investment envoys – who conceded that this was a serious problem – and to foreign governments themselves.)
This is, unfortunately, what comes from having a public service that is frankly not fit for purpose. The “rejection of meritocracy”, as the National Planning Commission put it. So, I doubt that South Africa’s representatives in the US are sufficiently networked and active to respond to serious challenges to the country’s interests, should they arise.
News24 coincidentally ran a piece by one Tara Roos – a young citizen activist – calling out South Africa for compromising its moral positions in global affairs by “economic pragmatism”. I’m not so sure. The South African state has very little understanding of economic matters, and not a great deal of interest in them. It has set up a whole edifice of policy, legislation and regulation to chase investment away. If indeed our diplomats do engage in any economic diplomacy – as in trade and investment promotion – they’re facing mountainous obstacles of South Africa’s own creation. Trade and investment that happens between South Africa and other countries is fundamentally on a firm-by-firm basis. The purchase of South African coal for Israel (which disturbs Roos) reflects private contracts. Sure, you can impose political restrictions on this – aka sanctions – though a failure to do so probably reflects inertia rather than “economic pragmatism”. I for one would like to see more “economic pragmatism”.
This, I think, is the crux of what a Trump presidency will mean for South Africa. Will South Africa’s economic relationships with the US endure? US interests are significant investors in South Africa, accounting for some 23.7% of the total (2022 figures). South African firms have substantial holdings in the US too, accounting for 14.8% of South African investment abroad. This makes the US the largest single national source of capital (though smaller than the total for the European Union as a whole), albeit a great deal of this is portfolio rather than direct investment. The investment relationship between South Africa and the US utterly dwarfs that between South Africa and China.
Trump is big on tariffs, with the explicit goal of giving a leg up to domestic production in the US. In trade terms, some 7.4% of South Africa’s exports go to the US (again, 2022 figures). Though outdone in value terms by China and the EU, this is a sizeable proportion of South Africa’s total, and also for its value-added products. China, by contrast, has greater demand for South Africa’s raw materials. Imports from the US account for 5.4% of South Africa’s total. This is well behind China, at 20.8%, India at 7.4% and Germany at 8.6% – but still important, and here again, the US supplies some high-end goods that a sophisticated economy needs.
These are relationships that make commercial sense, and would probably exist irrespective of the warmth of political ties. Not a great deal to worried about there. South Africa does benefit from special market access under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which gives a boost to such sectors as food and beverages, textiles and automotive industries.
Overall, AGOA is not enormously important to South Africa’s economy. A study published by the Brookings Institution found that its termination would cause a decline in South African exports in the order of 2.7% to the US, and of some 0.06% of South Africa’s GDP. It’s not existential, but having it is useful. Export opportunities lost as a result of the cancellation of AGOA access might not make a huge difference overall, though they would make a difference for firms hit by the cancellation and the jobs lost as a consequence.
Arguably more consequential is the Bush-era President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said last month that this contributed R8 billion a year to South Africa’s efforts in respect of HIV. (I have another Facebook acquaintance who posts his gratitude for this on his account from time to time; for him, it’s literally life-saving.)
These initiatives are not particularly prone to partisan wrangling, but neither are they entirely altruistic. The US is of course hoping that the support it provides will win hearts and minds, and incline recipient governments towards itself. C’est la vie, nothing wrong with that. It certainly would not intend these measures to underwrite regimes hostile to it. Eligibility for AGOA specifically requires recipients to pose no threat to US security interests.
South Africa’s eligibility for AGOA has been a perennial issue. Given that it is a middle-income country, it’s doubtful whether South Africa should in fact have been included; the afterglow of the country’s transition shone bright. This is no longer the case.
General consensus holds that Trump’s impulses are to be transactional: favours will be extended sparingly, and on a quid pro quo basis. America First means that the country’s national interests – as he understands them – will take priority. (For reasons I struggle to understand, a lot of people take umbrage at this. Including some who damn American for having done so long before Trump was a political figure.) Victor Davis Hanson described Trump’s approach as “Jacksonian”: no better friend, no worse enemy.
This may be a useful perspective to understanding things. At best, the relationship has been confused and incoherent, the product of South Africa’s own failings as a state. In any event, South Africa is not a US ally and, following the posture of the ANC since the Mbeki era, there is little to suggest that it sees the US as a friend. The notion of the US as a dread enemy is repeatedly made clear in its documents. US ambassador Reuben Brigety took the extraordinary step of reading extracts of this invective at a news conference.
In case the message wasn’t clear enough, Nomvula Mokonyane, ANC Deputy Secretary General – and alleged Bosasa blessee – stated emphatically that the renaming of Sandton Drive to Leile Khaled Drive was meant as an insult to the US: “We want the United States of America embassy [note: the US has a consulate in this location, its embassy is in Tshwane] to change their letterhead to Number 1 Leila Khaled Drive. We are sending a message that they cannot dominate us and tell us what to do. It must be in their face, it must be in their computers, in their letterheads.”
Let’s also bear in mind that none of this is Trump-specific. Relations under Obama and Biden were not appreciably warmer than they were under Trump (during Trump’s first incumbency), irrespective of what South Africa’s bien-pensants may have thought, or may have liked to think. For the ANC, and the state it has headed, the issue was the US itself, and its inherently “imperialist” nature.
That’s just the open, almost symbolic stuff. If South Africa’s government has a negative view of the US, its relationship with Russia and Iran are warm and cooperative, and its view of China is fawning. So what does that mean?
Interestingly, Trump wants to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. No, I don’t think this is about admiration for Valdimir Putin – unlike some within South Africa’s leadership – but because this is a large expense which he ties to the US’ “forever wars”, and which he and his supporters resent. (This is not dissimilar from the views that critics held of US involvement in Vietnam, or of the Iraq entanglement.) So, I can envisage some sort of deal that lets Russia keep what it’s taken, keeps Ukraine out of NATO – though possibly allows its candidacy for the European Union – but provides it with fairly solid security guarantees.
I would have misgivings about this myself, but I think it’s worth making two points. One is that US policy makers have been grumbling for decades – back into the Cold War – about the failure of their NATO allies to step up in terms of military preparedness. This means that some of the world’s most affluent countries behave more like US protectorates than allies. A failure to undertake the necessary spending is now coming back to bite them. Ukraine is a matter of profound importance to European security, rather than to that of the US. This should be a wake-up call for the Europeans. The second is that the solution I’ve sketched out is actually something that would leave DIRCO smiling, as it would save face for South Africa’s Russian friends.
Trump will, by contrast, be hawkish on China. Here he is not outside the American mainstream. For ideological, geopolitical and economic reasons, relations between the two countries are stressed. This has the potential to develop into a shooting war, that will drag in some of its core allies – Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines. South Africa has nothing to offer this situation one way or another, though it’s hard to imagine it resisting the temptation to bandwagon with China. We’ve seen elements of this, most recently in seeking to expel Taiwan’s representatives from Tshwane.
China can probably count on South Africa’s diplomatic support – such as it can be – in this confrontation. It’s hardwired into the geopolitical DNA. In so doing, it will alienate the US further.
Equally, I see Trump being hawkish on Iran. South Africa’s positioning vis-à-vis the latter country has been noted in the US; China is a global power whose influence is unavoidable, while a relationship with Iran is engaged in by choice. I’d go further and say that on some issues, South Africa has aligned itself with Iranian positions, most notably on what is now effectively an eliminationist approach Israel. (Yes, I know, technically it’s all about Palestinian self-determination and a two-state solution, but when you’re indicting a state for genocide and describing it as settler-colonial entity, the conclusions only lead in one direction, and it’s not dissimilar from that of those cruise missiles that Iran was firing…) South Africa is making itself highly visible, ironically, on terrain where it has virtually no influence, and where the downsides could be painful.
Frans Cronje said a few days ago that the smartest course of action for South Africa would be to make the US believe it didn’t exist. That’s not bad advice. South Africa has resources and location that could prove useful leverage in its relationship with the US – in fact, this is just the sort of transactional system that might work well with Trump, not least given his intention to bring manufacturing back to the US. South Africa’s mineral endowments are a great resource. But that would be contrary to the pretensions the ANC has about its historic role, and with which it has imbued the state. South Africa needs to be visible. It is doing so without the requisite diplomatic tools, and the consequence is that concerns about South Africa’s geopolitical posturing is a rare issue of bipartisan concern in the US, and has already placed a question mark over South Africa’s ongoing participation in these programmes – a rare instance of political intrusion on the latter.
Note that this arises from the geopolitical positioning that the ANC has taken over decades. For whatever reasons, the US has largely shrugged it off. In Trump, South Africa may find an interlocutor less inclined to do so. I do fear that precipitous action by an irritated US would be counterproductive to both countries. For the most part, ordinary South Africans do not share official hostility to the US, and even if the impact of, say, revoking AGOA access was limited, the symbolism would be profound. And unfortunate for both countries. But let’s be clear that we would be seeing is the culmination of choices made by South Africa as much as by the US. South Africa is a sovereign state, and has every right to take the positions it does. So does the US. Such choices may not be without adverse consequences.
Interestingly, the Brookings analysis suggested that a far more productive approach to AGOA would be to expand the basket of goods it covers to include the mineral imports that the US needs. The thinking is that this will be beneficial to both sides and incentivising both to keep it going. There is a lot of sense to that, and an argument that South Africa’s diplomats should be pushing. Whether they are is doubtful.
Incidentally, Ebrahim Rasool is tipped to return to Washington as ambassador. He says that he intends to position South Africa as a “moral superpower”. The hubris and unreality of this is breathtaking. If ever it could make that claim, it cannot anymore. That this claim is indeed being made as a basis for diplomacy just emphasises the depth of South Africa’s malaise.
So I’m not especially optimistic about the relationship between South Africa and the US in the coming years, though for reasons that differ from a lot of what other commentators are putting forward.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m also not expecting more nuanced media coverage or analysis as events unfold. “America” is for many South Africans a place in the heart, rather than a place on a map, and more revealing of ourselves than any foreign reality. I think too many commentators are invested in matters relating to Donald Trump as a series of moral pantomimes. I do, however, hope that in looking at the “implications for South Africa” there is a recognition that this is a two-way relationship, and its current form owes a great deal to choices that have been made by South Africa’s leaders and a narrative that has been crafted over decades.
South Africa is a country in crisis, a matter entirely separate from Trump or the US. It’s not even a matter entirely to be laid at the door of inept and often venal governance, since we as South Africans refused – over and over and over again – to demand a course correction. And if the country fails to navigate the next few years, it’s fair and necessary to retain this long-term perspective in mind. South Africa matters less than it should because it has made the choices it has. All the pained rhetorical questions about how – oh HOW??? – American voters could have given Trump so handy an election victory might fruitfully be matched by similar questions about our own conduct and our tolerance for pathologies that have brought South Africa to its knees. “As a South African”, that really concerns me.
[Photo: by Bryan Papazov on Unsplash]
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