Eminent American historian Timothy Snyder wrote in the introduction to his short book On Tyranny, “History does not repeat itself but it does instruct.”
The subtitle of his work, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, is helpful in navigating the current crisis which has engulfed SA-US relations, now at their worst point since 1986.
In I986, the US Congress, overriding the veto of then-president Ronald Reagan, enacted the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which imposed a vast array of sanctions against South Africa, which were not lifted until the end of apartheid itself was signalled in 1993.
The legislation, mirroring other items of global isolation of besieged SA, was one of the principal reasons which hastened the demise of the apartheid state.
In exile but not without diplomatic heft, the ANC was a key lobbyist for the enactment of sanctions by the US Congress and maintained a diplomatic office in Washington DC precisely for this purpose.
ANC – heart of government pronouncements
Last week in Parliament during his SONA address, since eclipsed by President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa both referenced – as he always does – the apartheid era but also borrowed from its playbook. He announced with clear reference to earlier remarks from Trump – which presaged the executive order to follow – “We won’t be deterred; we won’t be bullied.”
This was followed in short order by his spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, who told the Sunday Times: “We will not allow ourselves to be bullied.”
The real heart of government pronouncements, of course, lies within the ANC itself. Any passing observer who wonders why the current GNU contains parties (such as the DA) that resolutely oppose the current foreign policy that cossets Russia, Iran, Hamas, and the whole nine yards of an anti-Western alignment would do well to remember the ANC regards international relations as its own sealed mandate.
Since the ANC itself clearly drives our international alignments and response to current threats, the party’s considered response to the Trump executive order last Friday, posted on Sunday is, a la Snyder, “instructive”:
The statement also called for “citizens of the world” to “unite for the final assault on colonialism and imperialism”.
Whichever keyboard warrior at the ANC’s department of communications penned this victim-laden and juvenile rant did not obviously do a deep, or any, dive into the history of 20th-century South Africa. Nor even into the prescripts of AGOA which the government is desperately, and correctly, trying to salvage from the knacker’s yard where Trump and his congressional majority are likely to consign it.
The rallying around the flag and giving the middle finger to the US (whose economy today stands at $29 trillion versus SA’s at $418 billion) has an echo of past times here at the hands of the ANC’s now vanquished nemesis, the National Party.
Then and now
But John Vorster, prime minister of South Africa in 1977, proved it can be a potent electoral calling card. At the time, the electorate was whites-only, he won a landslide majority in that year’s election, but it masked the poverty of his domestic policies, and worse, simply prefigured the storm of international isolation he would unleash on the country.
Of course, time present does not mimic in key respects times past.
Apartheid South Africa, unlike democratic South Africa today, denied constitutional and civic rights to the majority. South Africa back then was the largest gold producer in the world and posted a hefty foreign reserve cushion due to this fact. Its growth rate in 1977 faltered but the following year recovered to around 3% GDP.
Another big difference between then and now is also significant. Carter, as US president, imposed diplomatic pressure on South Africa but opposed economic sanctions on this country. This approach was followed by his successor in office, Reagan, and his successor, George HW Bush. It was Congress that forced the issue.
Trump in the White House has torn up the playbook and is unconcerned by precedent or diplomatic niceties. He also controls his party, which has majorities in both houses of Congress.
The idea that small SA can rail against the US – although with provenance in apartheid times – does not meet the challenge of current times with our economy so deeply enmeshed and integrated into the world economy, at whose heart sits the US.
It might be well that Trump, utterly unconcerned with history, past pain and colonialist suffering, and is brutally transactional in all matters, will draw up the bridge on international commerce and conduct an isolationist approach to trade and tariffs. But for this country, the involvement of US companies remains a cornerstone for a huge raft of our economic metrics and employment.
A summary of this dependence was offered with crystalline concision by Kuseni Dlamini, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa. In response to Trump’s actions and statements, he noted 600 US companies operate in SA; collectively, the American commercial presence here contributes 10% of our total GDP and employs 200 000 South Africans.
On AGOA, he reminds us it accounts for one-fifth of our exports to the US, which in the case of agriculture rises to 75% and in respect of manufacturing to 59%.
These are huge and significant. Left unsaid in his thoughtful article – which called for “cool heads” to sort the current bilateral crisis – was the target which the ANC’s pro-Iran and pro-Hamas foreign policy has placed on the country’s back. This has nothing to do with interpretations or misinterpretations on expropriation or AfriForum’s lobbying.
It has everything to do with the deliberate and definitive choices made by the ANC over 30 years, which have ratcheted up since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
Neither AfriForum, nor Elon Musk and his unhappy Pretoria childhood, nor the right-wing white nationalist elements in Trumpworld, who see parallels with some ideological or racial communities here at home, caused our foreign policy choices.
It has everything to do with doubling down by the ANC which determines these matters on the anti-Western, anti-Israel, and in the ANC’s view, “imperialist and colonialist” world order, of which, in this view, Israel is the outpost in the Middle East.
Once again, it is not just Naledi Pandor’s infamous phone call after 7 October to Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh. Nor the preceding ANC policy statement from 2022 calling the party the vanguard of “the international liberation movement to liberate humanity from the bondage of imperialism and neo-colonialism”. Though doubtless if the number one target of this approach, the US, decided to up sticks here then the “liberating” effect of such disengagement will have a steep local price tag attached.
It is not just past policy but its present continuance which explains matters.
Even after the country was absorbing the Trump executive order on SA which directly called out SA’s “aggressive positions towards the US and its allies including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide”… the SA official stance simply doubled down.
Mgwenya in his Sunday interview, nonchalantly referenced Israel as “genocidal”. Leave aside the fact millions of taxpayer rands have been expended on asking the ICJ to determine this yet unresolved matter, the ease with which the top presidential mouthpiece makes this incendiary labelling tells you how tough the conversations will be when Ramaphosa finally gets round to sending his emissaries to Washington DC.
SA is ill-prepared for the economic storm and worsening dilemmas which will confront us if – a big presupposition – Trump retains his interest in the country and exacts a price for policies which are uncongenial to his world view.
We tore up our bilateral investment treaties, we never commenced or advanced a free-trade agreement with the US under a more benign administration, and we have poor hard currency reserves to shelter us from the change in economic weather.
It appears we will make no concessions or even mild compromises on our foreign alignments, policies and statements, which, in large measure, have resulted in the current crisis with the US.
History instructs
Once again, history “does not repeat itself, but it does instruct”.
When, in 1977, Vorster railed against the bullying interference of the US, the cause of his distemper was pressure from the Carter administration to force a change in SA policy towards renegade Rhodesia and its prime minister, Ian Smith.
He told the New York Times then:
His words of defiance, as history records, melted into acquiescence when Vorster pressured Smith and within three years Rhodesia was irreversibly on the path to majority rule.
Ramaphosa is not Vorster, and Trump bears no resemblance to Carter.
But we don’t have years to sort out the issues of the deepest crisis in our bilateral relations with the world’s super-power. Though echoes from the past do instruct, in some ways, present times too.
Asking the right questions, finding the difficult answers, and adjusting past courses to meet present times without the struggle nostalgia of yore would, though, be a useful roadmap. We now navigate a new and dangerous road ahead.
Old maps won’t help.
