SOUTH AFRICA made headlines this week, and it’s not all good. First up was the public spat between President Ramaphosa and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame over M23 and the DRC. Kagame accuses our president of deploying SANDF troops to further his own interests that include mining, (in the process supporting Felix Tshisekedi and the self-same forces responsible for the Rwandan Genocide).
Next it was Donald Trump’s “Very Bad Things” remark in reference to the signing into law of a bill that allows the state confiscation of property at nil cost. That our President says it won’t be used, is no real assurance to those investors worried about what else is under the mattress.
No sooner had presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya indicated that Ramaphosa wished to see Trump over a round of golf in the runup to the G20 Summit to be held in the country this year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an extraordinary statement declining to attend.
One cannot help thinking that Magwenya would have been better off inviting Paul Kagame to play golf at Sun City, than issuing informal invitations via the media, playing Trump diplomacy that seems rather shallow considering the range and scope of the disagreement with the USA that has been brewing for over a decade.
Instead of playing a losing game with macho dedollarisation talk inside BRICS with its male-only summits, we could have been rebuilding our continent and avoiding the situation in which we are on the brink of a war with Rwanda. With decades of low-growth and under-spending on security, South Africa lacks the military capability it once had.
Bear in mind that the USA is going through a radical shakeup of its federal government under the auspice of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)to curb a trillion dollar deficit, as it enters a period of protectionism, tariffs and anti-globalism under Trump.
That there is a toxic mix of climate change denialism and ultranationalism congealed around the excesses of the left in the USA is certain. Rubio’s emphatic opposition to Ramaphosa’s buzzwords,(nothing more than empty promises undermining market-led meritocracy) comes on the heels of the Biden administration support for bizarre aid programs around the world that include transgender education for children in India
Instead of crying about aid packages and bail-outs, South Africa could do well to learn from Argentina’s Javier Milei, where his government posted a fiscal surplus for the first time, and in little more than a year. As others might put it: a country that cannot pay its bills, doesn’t get to set a foreign policy agenda.