It is not easy or comfortable dealing with the mercurial US administration, but as the fate of lot of communities in many places in SA will soon realise, it is an obvious necessity, writes Tony Leon.

The South African government can, with honour, award itself an OBE – in this case, diplomatic shorthand for “overtaken by events”. Or more precisely, overwhelmed by a wave which will crest on 1 August when the Trump tariff kicks in.

This past weekend, President Cyril Ramaphosa orated in the Northern Cape that the province could be, at an indeterminate future date, the “heartbeat” of South Africa’s economy.

Meanwhile, he blithely ignored the devastating impact US tariffs would impose on both the Northern and Western Cape rural areas. Entire towns and thousands of jobs are on the line here. And in the Eastern Cape, with vast swathes of the province dependent on US automotive exports, the situation could soon be even worse.

Citrus Growers Association of Southern Africa (CGA) filled in the details conveniently ignored by the president.

“Seasonal fresh produce is perishable”, CGA advised on Monday, and cannot be stored for extended periods, like other trade products.”

It noted that hundreds of thousands of cartons of citrus are “ready in pack houses to be shipped to the US over the next few weeks”.

Economic disaster looms

Absent an agreement with the US, improbably by Friday, the imposition of a 30% tariff on 1 August will mean “most of the fruit will remain unsold”. Switching markets is unfeasible in the short, even medium, term, but immediate job losses and local economic disaster loom.

The Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition has been lethargic in fast-tracking a trade deal; SA boasts a defrocked Ambassador to the US, a grounded presidential special envoy to America, and a Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco) asleep at the wheel.

While Ramaphosa has been unbothered – for five months now – to appoint an ambassador to replace the expelled Ebrahim Rasool, SA still maintains a bench full of diplomats at its embassy in Washington DC and consulates in New York City and Los Angeles.

This large contingent comes with a hefty price tag of annual running costs to the local taxpayer easily more than R20 million per year.

Precisely what their day jobs consist of is a matter of imaginative contemplation.

For example, on 18 July, the influential Wall Street Journal ran a prominent op ed headlined “Wall Street Misprices South Africa’s Collapse”.

This doomster article penned by Max Meizlish of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies is filled with dire warnings of a “reckoning coming for South Africa”. He cites looming “sanctions and compliance risks stemming from Pretoria’s collapsed standing in Washington”.

The article, whether alarmist or prophetic, drew 668 responses from readers. However, there was no answer on the comment or letters page from a single SA embassy official, suggesting diplomatic malpractice of the highest order at a critical time.

Personal price tag

Here at home, the largest party in government, the ANC, cavorted on the weekend at a liberation movements summit with such democracy – and rights-enhancing organisations as Zanu-PF. Meanwhile, its national coalition partner, the DA, witnessed the departure from its front bench of international relations spokesperson Emma Powell MP.

In her resignation statement, Powell stated that there had been a cost to her “speaking out against some of the world’s most repressive and brutal regimes” who, in her opinion, are “more closely enmeshed with government leaders and Dirco than the public realises”.

Part of her personal price tag for this was to “be threatened, intimidated, harassed and illegally surveilled”, she advised in her statement. She was apparently under investigation by the National Security Council.

Apparently, what got the government and Dirco’s goat was her visit to Washington DC in February (along with defenestrated DA deputy minister Andrew Whitfield). A well-sourced government leak suggested Powell was on “an unauthorised trip to the USA (interesting that parliamentarians require government approval for overseas visits) spreading disinformation against South Africa”.

This, of course, was mild stuff compared to the treatment meted out to AfriForum and Solidarity for a similar visit to the US.

Two months back, Minister in the Presidency Khumbodzo Ntshavheni told Parliament that both movements “are under investigation for alleged acts of treason… for providing misinformation… we continue to to make sure that treasonous acts cannot be left unpunished”.

Of course, nothing further has been heard of this absurdist claim, a stinging indictment of ministerial malapropism and clumsy deflection aimed at the heart of the Constitution itself. Killing or overthrowing the sovereign or government is the common law definition of treason, but such legal niceties are not in this minister’s toolkit.

What her wildly unsubstantiated and reckless attack, coupled with the harassment of Emma Powell, reveals is the common thread which links the ANC to the liberation movements it was celebrating this past weekend. And indeed, to Pretoria’s nemesis in the White House, Donald Trump. He, too, is ever in search of avenging his opponents, whom he regards as enemies of the state.

Tests of authoritarian behaviour 

In 2018, after Donald Trump was first elected president, Harvard professors and democracy scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published a lucid guide on how democracies end not with a bang but more with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions and the erosion of long-standing political norms.

Their book How Democracies Die was taken as a warning on the democratic backsliding under Trump’s authoritarian inclinations and practices. But US democracy has over 250 years of evolving practice even though its guardrails are being tested ever more.

In the out-of-date website of the SA consulate in New York City, much is made of last year’s 30-year celebration of constitutional democracy at home.

Yet here we are in year 31 and one of the key indicators of “authoritarian behaviour” is being met by the same ANC government which ceaselessly boasts, as axed ambassador Rasool infamously did, of “South Africa’s moral superpower”.

In How Democracies Die, the authors advise that one of tests of authoritarian behaviour by a government is “the denial of the legitimacy of political opponents”.

There are, in turn, four questions relating to this test, for governments that imperil democratic norms and standards. These are :

  • Do they describe their rivals as subversive or opposed to the constitutional order?
  • Do they claim that their rivals constitute an existential threat to national security?
  • Do they baselessly describe their partisan rivals as criminals whose supposed violation of the law disqualifies them from full participation in the political arena?
  • Do they baselessly suggest that their rivals are foreign agents, in that they are secretly working in an alliance with a foreign government – usually an enemy one?

It is easy to join the dots here on how these tests have been recklessly passed by the ANC in government.

Cast your mind back a bit further to last year’s election and the formation of the GNU. Then key ANC ally, the SA Communist Party (which boasts at least five Cabinet ministers today), accused “Western governments of orchestrated efforts to elevate a coalition of right-wing opposition parties after the election propping up a of an imperialist foreign agenda to remove the ANC from power”.

So, while elections are robustly contested here, the careless throwing around by ANC ministers and allies of treason charges and referencing opposition MPs to the National Security Council suggests another agenda at play.

Of course, this deflection and disparagement might do damage to the democratic carapace of the country. But at root it is a desperate attempt by a failing government to cast around for convenient villains to blame for the looming economic catastrophe of the Trump tariffs.

Neglecting a key trading relationship, and aggravating not lessening, the economic threats facing the country and seriously engaging on its causes should be the top imperative. It is not easy or comfortable dealing with the mercurial US administration, but as the fate of lot of communities in many places in SA will soon realise, it is an obvious necessity.

The 30% US tariff axe falls on 1 August (current SA exports there amount to approximately R147 billion per annum). On that day President Ramaphosa will be exploring economic opportunities on a state visit to Guinea-Bissau (current SA exports there are approximately R12 million). That tells another tale about misplaced priorities and mispriced comfort zones.