It has become common cause that Reuben Brigety, the US’s ambassador to SA, only apologised for protocol breaches in communicating Washington’s displeasure at SA’s alleged arming of Russia in its war against Ukraine.
His core allegation, on which he has bet his life — that SA has provided weapons to Russia — stands. So too does the threat of a wider economic fallout from the diplomatic incident.
SA is strategically important to the world, and Americans know it. Its geographic position — being surrounded by the Atlantic and Indian oceans — makes it a geopolitically significant player regardless of who occupies the Union Buildings.
Since Brigety’s press conference last Thursday, the SA government has sought to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. For months now, the West-SA relations have been on a downward spiral.
The inflection point has been two factors: first, SA’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine war and Pretoria’s abstention from a resolution at the UN calling Russia an aggressor in the year-long conflict; and second, a Russian vessel, Lady R, that inexplicably docked in Simon’s Town last December.
Though disappointed with Pretoria’s “neutral, non-aligned” stance in the war, the West has grudgingly accepted that it cannot force SA to change this position. To its credit, Pretoria has not stopped private sector humanitarian support for victims of the war.
However, Lady R, which the West believes collected weapons for Russia’s military, changed everything: SA could no longer be deemed neutral. Claims by SA’s defence ministry that the ship left without weapons have proven unsatisfactory.
Panicked by growing calls in the US Congress to review SA-US relations, Pretoria sent envoys to Washington. At stake is a long-standing relationship between the two countries.
In the 1980s, at the urging of the US black caucus in Congress, Congress finally enacted the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, the most pernicious law that made apartheid economically unviable, and Washington ordered the apartheid government to stop shooting unarmed black South Africans.
After 1994, the sanctions law was scrapped and American companies returned en masse to support the new SA. In 2000, President Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela’s friend, passed the seminal African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). This is a law that grants thousands of African exports (except arms) duty-free access to America’s vast market.
Unlike free trade agreements which require reciprocity, Agoa is a unilateral gesture. Uniquely, it has no quotas on how much each beneficiary can export to America duty-free. Obviously, dumped goods would attract punitive duties as in any other jurisdiction.
As a unilateral measure, Agoa does not require years of technical and political negotiations to implement. The current 10-year iteration is due for review in 2025. The hope was that a guaranteed market would spur African industrialists and their governments to build productive capacity to supply the American market. Some did, some did not.
SA, with the most sophisticated albeit skewed economy, was added to the list of beneficiaries. Its R400bn bilateral trade with the US is also the result of Agoa, though ANC officials sought to play it down in briefings to the media. This trade excludes many of the hundreds of US companies directly invested in SA.
SA’s carmakers, which enjoy generous state support, have been among the major beneficiaries under the scheme.
The US does not have to wait until 2025 to remove SA from Agoa. It removed Guinea and Ethiopia in the scheme’s midterm and could do the same with SA. It is partly this fear of an abrupt exclusion of SA’s exporters that bolted Pretoria into damage-limitation diplomacy. Realists in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s camp are aware of this vulnerability and that it will provoke anger from SA’s private sector.
Over the years, China has overtaken many countries as Africa’s foremost trading partner. The US is now SA’s second.
Still, this doesn’t mean SA exporters, with the hundreds of thousands of jobs they support, would not feel the pain if SA was removed from Agoa. A replacement trade arrangement, say a free trade agreement, would take years to negotiate. Ask the Europeans.
Brigety’s conduct might be seen as undiplomatic, as he himself has acknowledged. But his allegations require a speedy satisfactory rebuttal, if this exists. Lady R is a boil that is unlikely to be lanced by a commission of inquiry chaired by a retired judge.
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