FOR three decades South Africa has survived on an astonishing goodwill story — victory against apartheid brought with it a peace dividend, a return to global trade, and cessation of international sanctions. But instead of embracing rapprochement with the West, the country chose a path marred by massive contradictions. Professing non-alignment on a variety of issues, Pretoria essentially orchestrated an alliance with every tin-pot dictatorship and authoritarian regime out there.
BRICS for want of a better description, is nothing more than a boondoggle of corrupt regimes run by petty bureacrats and traitors to the cause of democracy. None of the constitutional emperatives outlined by our constitution and its so-called apex court in Braamfontein appear to have influenced the current administration and its bizarre policies that support the death penalty for LGBT in Iran, the end of multiparty democracy in Hong Kong and Asia, the elimination of women’s rights in Russia, and return to slavery in Houthi Yemen.
If South Africa were to be judged on its foreign policy alone, one could be forgiven for coming to the startling conclusion that when it comes to braaivleis, sunny skies , pap & boerevleis, we lack any civil rights at home. Yet our country for all its failings has shown that our multiparty democracy is able to deliver stability and a status quo, that more often than not resembles freedom, if not a free press.
If Pretoria thought its ascendency to the G20 chair this year would somehow translate into business as usual, then economists had better take heed, because Pretoria’s leftist brown-nosing, deflecting serious criticism, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has come to a grinding halt as Donald Trump was re-elected. The Republican-majority US Congress is already beying for our blood.
Key Republicans are already pressing the incoming Trump administration to kick South Africa out of lucrative trade arrangements, including AGOA – the African Growth and Opportunity Act – should the South African government ‘not change its position on Russia, China, Iran and Israel’.
Most at risk is South Africa’s duty-free exports to the U.S. of items such as cars and citrus fruit, and with it the potential loss of tens of thousands of African jobs. South Africa is likely to be under intense scrutiny from the incoming administration.
A publication from the Center for African Studies at Howard University, in 2023, warned that a country wanting AGOA’s preferential trade agreements “cannot act in a manner that undermines U.S. national security or foreign policy interests”.
This as our neighbour Mocambique is collapsing amidst a concerted effort by opposition groups including Jihadists to nulllify the results of the last election. Over Christmas a mass prison breakout saw over a hundred members of ISIS in Mocambique breaking out of max security prison. China itself is under pressure from a major deficit involving government overspending for decades, and is unlikely to be in a position to bail out its fellow BRICS nations.
Only time can tell whether Mocambique, and SADC regains its peacetime footing, but currently the region resembles Syria rather than Singapore.
The prospect of R20 to the Dollar should be more than a wake-up call.
READ: BRICS, a boondoggle of dictators, homophobes & outright misogynists
SEE: South Africa is becoming another front in the war against Israel
SEE: South Africa is not pro-Palestinian its Pro-Hamas
SEE: Iran & Qatar have their fingerprints all over South Africa ICJ case