Timing in life and politics is everything. So, spare a thought for new Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau. He arrived on Tuesday in Washington DC, as head of a government-business delegation seeking to engage Congress and the White House on retaining our Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) privileges and mitigating the fallout from the full-blown review of the SA-US bilateral relationship mandated by the House of Representatives.

Our feeble diplomatic presence on the Hill, aggravated by the extraordinary neglect of government to nominate an ambassador to the US is one strike against this mission’s success.

As referenced in this column before, that omission paled by comparison with the resurgence of Donald Trump after his near-death experience and his unity convention last week. His anti-trade, anti-foreign entanglement vice-presidential pick, Senator JD Vance, and what this portends for the future of a possible Republican sweep in November could be an indicator of the chill winds likely to blow in our direction.

Then there is the timing of the address on Wednesday to a joint session of Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The controversial and beleaguered Israeli is beloved by the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement which now owns the Republican Party and reviled by left-leaning Democrats.

Support for Israel, regardless of which prime minister is in charge there, might be fraying at the edges of US politics and certainly on American campuses, but it still commands majority support in both parties.

Netanyahu will, especially with the steep loss of life and bombings in Gaza continuing and the prospect of war on the northern front with Hezbollah, suck up most of the media and political oxygen in the US capitol. Or the little political air left over from the extraordinary announcement on Sunday from President Joe Biden that he will not seek re-election as president.

Even before Biden dropped his bombshell withdrawal and anointed Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s candidate, The Economist noted the previous week’s events as “America has passed through one of Lenin’s weeks when decades happen”.

Historical parallels 

Now a wild week is capped by the decision of a sitting president to withdraw from a race for the first time since 1968. For those who look for historical parallels, it is striking that when Lyndon Johnson retired from the race 56 years ago, Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee, would be the first Republican to be nominated three times as presidential nominee (1960, 1968, 1972). Until the ascendancy of Trump (2016, 2020 and now in 2024). But that is where any comparison, beyond their legal travails ends.

Nixon and the next elected Republican president, Ronald Reagan, were mainstream internationalists, who used statecraft to configure the world order based on a strong balance of power and cementing global alliances.

Trump has no time for such strategies. For him, it is about transactions, not time-honoured commitments, whether to Taiwan, Ukraine or, least of all, NATO. Paying for the US military umbrella counts most of all in Trumpworld. Africa barely registers in his worldview except with derision.

A former US vice-president, John Nance Garner, famously noted that the vice-presidency was “not worth a bucket of warm spit”. Unless, of course, the president dies or retires in office.

The passing of the Democratic baton to Vice-President Kamala Harris proves that proximity to power or being adjacent to it has its advantages, whatever the limitations of the number two spot. As the first African American woman likely to be nominated for the top slot on a presidential ticket, her accession is norm-breaking.

It could be said that nothing became of Biden’s tenure in office more than his departure from it—very late in the day, though. Except that he did achieve some significant wins over the past three years, legislatively and internationally.

Restoring democratic norms and decency after the chaos of the Trump years, not least the 6 January mob invasion of the Capitol after Trump refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, was perhaps his greatest gift. Yet the grit he displayed in overcoming personal tragedies and political setbacks encrusted into a wilful, stubborn determination to cling to the privileges of his post.

‘Bed-wetting’ brigade 

Even when 50 million Americans viewed Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump three weeks back, that at 81, he was not up to the job. Or could even coherently debate. And four more years was simply unimaginable to anyone outside his family and political circle.

Just two weeks back, his deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, said: “The bed-wetting brigade is calling for Joe Biden to drop out. This is the best way for Donald Trump to win and us to lose. Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, period. End of story.”

Always avoid such declarations, especially when the polls cratered and the cash spigots from donors turned off. The “bed wetters” won in the end.

Now that Harris, a conventional Californian liberal, takes centre stage, the race for the White House is at least competitive. Simply by withdrawing, Biden in one stroke not only removes the single biggest obstacle for the Democrats, age and infirmity, but switches the focus to 78-year-old Trump. He is now the oldest nominee ever to seek election.

Harris is a machine politician from the bluest of States whose previous foray on the presidential stage, in 2020, ended ignominiously. But at least—at a relatively young 59—she is not in cognitive decline or worse. There is also the vaguest chance that policy, not personality, will play a role in choosing the next president.

Here, though, Harris starts with some severe disadvantages, since from border security to price inflation, she is joined at the hip to the administration and its unpopular polices on these issues.

With all this crowding out other matters, the South Africans in Washington on Wednesday carrying the message for engagement with the new government of national unity, it’s a tough sell. But it is an easier one than it might have been with a warmed-over repeat of another unimaginative solo ANC administration doing the selling. And the presence of some business eminences in the group should count for something.

They will, though, need some more detail than repeating the mantra that “South Africa is open for business.” A nice cliché often observed entirely in the breach by the highly ideological and profoundly business unfriendly department which Tau now heads.

Let’s see how many runs they put on the scoreboard for SA Inc.