Tony Leon reflects on lessons for the US-SA relations in the relationship between Jorge Bergoglio (who later became Pope Francis) and the former president to Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
A lot of airtime right now is taken with the identity of who President Cyril Ramaphosa appoints as South Africa’s new ambassador to the United States.
Though, as I previously noted, the essence of the problem in this both beleaguered but essential bilateral relationship is the issue of policy and messaging, not the identity of diplomatic messenger. That is the core of the issue.
Still, as Tolstoy wrote of a tree, the “leaves can enchant us more than the roots” so the jockeying to be our man in Washington DC entrances more than close examination of the missing tools in the wannabe diplomat’s toolbox.
The Sunday Times suggested that the choice has narrowed to “four white Afrikaans men” each with some degree of attachment to the ANC, an apparent essential criterion for consideration.
In Trumpworld, though, this would be mocked as a “DEI hire” (diversity, equity and inclusion). This is red-rag-to-the-bull stuff in Maga-land one of the points of agreement which unites the far-right wingnuts and more mainstream Republicans who joust for the ear of an erratic President.
Cue here Secretary of State Marco Rubio, about as conventional a member of the administration as can be found in Trump’s cabinet of curiosities.
On 6 February, a few weeks before expelling Ebrahim Rasool from his post, Rubio announced that he was boycotting the G20 Summit in Johannesburg. He wrote:
I will NOT attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg. South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality and sustainability’. In other words: DEI and climate change.
While Rubio will find a ready audience here among the fossil fuel dinosaurs, like minerals minister Gwede Mantashe, he would (in the improbable event of ever visiting here) find the same minister is also king of local DEI. Just witness his draft regulations for oil and gas licences just released. Rigid BEE percentages sit front and centre of these. Apparently unnoticed and unbothered that major exploration companies (such as TotalEnergies) have recently upped sticks. Or that Elon Musk – who sits at centre of the White House – denounced SA’s “racist ownership laws”.
A sage local business leader, with a close understanding of the vicissitudes engulfing our relations with the US suggested to me that the US administration’s fierce opposition to all forms of our version of DEI is at the root of a lot of the resentments. One could add that the SA government’s equally fierce attachment to demographic determinism (despite our recumbent economy and mountainous unemployment) remains as firm as ever, untouched by real-world events.
Even if, in the process, it collapses the showpiece diplomatic event – South Africa’s presidency of the G20 this year or renders it meaningless, since a G20 absent the G1, or the US in this case, is like the play Hamlet minus the Prince of Denmark (do not even mention Denmark’s ownership of Greenland in this context).
Mission Impossible
A posting to Washington DC in this context could be the political equivalent of Mission Impossible. And if this does not deter any nominee, just have a reality check on the ambassadorial function in modern times, absent other difficulties.
Viewers of the recent Netflix hit series The Diplomat could be forgiven for imagining Bourne meets Bond is the role of an ambassador. In this series, the US Ambassador to London heroically averts a national security crisis or two, with “a Tom Clancey grade foreign policy adventure”‘ as one admiring critic wrote. And the ambassador’s deputy head of mission, in the Netflix version at least, also brings her racks of clothes and tells the glamorous diplomat what to wear.
The death, aptly on Easter Monday, of the universally admired pontiff, Pope Francis, reminded me – from my own diplomatic journeys in his homeland, Argentina – that the ambassador’s role is far less glamorous, a lot more mundane and indeed often wearying.
Back in May 2011, Jorge Bergoglio was the most eminent Catholic in Argentia and presided as Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires at the magnificent Cathedral, within walking distance of the presidential palace of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the country’s head of state.
Bergoglio (who became Pope Francis two years later in 2013) was an admired figure of impressive humility, who on occasion would grace our embassy functions with his presence.
However, he was an arch critic of Kirchner and had severely criticised her for what he termed “the resentful vindications that seek to cover up their incapacity to offer creative and trust-inspiring alternatives”. Kirchner vowed never to step foot in his cathedral again. And during my tenure in Buenos Aires, she was true to her word.
Her boycott of Bergoglio led to the diplomatic corps not being taken, at great convenience, to Buenos Aires Cathedral for the annual Te Deum the religious event marking the anniversary of the Day of the Revolution – Argentina’s pathway to independence some 201 years before.
A friendlier Bishop
Instead, at some inconvenience, we were flown by government-chartered plane to a Cathedral some 1 200 km away in remote Chaco. There Kirchner was guaranteed a far friendlier bishop and an adoring crowd of local supporters.
Afterwards, my fellow ambassadors and I endured more than two hours of speechifying on the glories of Kirchnerism from her political supporters, followed by the president herself, who modestly advised the audience, “Finally, your dream for an inclusive Argentina has come true.” This, from one of the most divisive figures (sort of Spanish-speaking version of Malema and Zuma combined) in recent Argentine history.
The diplomatic corps were huddled – in the teeth of icy winds – on hard seats and sans any refreshment – to witness the panegyrics. Then back to the local airport for the two-and half-hour flight back. The total time around for all this was around 14 hours, and diplomatic achievement beyond obeying the iron law to “be present” was nil. Although we were served a stale roll on the homeward flight.
SA and US relations are a high-stakes drama right now, but a lot of the diplomatic function itself consists of low stakes bureaucratic shuffling and a great deal of public posturing – usually as guest witness rather than frontline performer, as my flight to Chaco proved.
However, there was an end story to the fraught relationship between Kirchner and her Cardinal when Bergoglio in 2013 became the first ever pontiff from Latin America, and the first non-European Pope chosen in over a thousand years.
Immediately on his election, Kirchner flew to Rome to kiss his ring. And despite all the history and recent enmity a cordial and even close relationship followed.
Maybe at this time of mourning for a truly admired figure such as Pope Francis, there is something of a lesson here – and not just about the homage which political vice in the form of divisive populists, often pay to religious virtue. But that irreconcilables can in time reconcile.
There is something earthly in this, maybe even touching on the fractured and fragmented relations between the US and SA right now. Though don’t just depend on a DEI hire for its achievement.
