Washington’s best option to change SA’s behaviour and protect US interests would be to target specific ANC government officials responsible for anti-US policies, a senior fellow of a conservative US think-tank has argued.
These measures could target the officials’ personal wealth and ability to travel abroad, the report by the Washington-based Hudson Institute said.
Business Day’s US-based columnist Simon Barber said the Hudson Institute was a respectable, right-of-centre think-tank with a leaning towards the Republican Party. He believed that the report would be read with interest on Capitol Hill.
This approach would protect US/SA bilateral relations and its strategic and economic interests. The publication of the report followed the executive order by US president Donald Trump terminating aid to SA in the wake of the promulgation of the Expropriation Act and the offer of refugee status to Afrikaners.
Hudson Institute fellow Joshua Meservey suggested in the report tools that could be used against ANC leaders included visa bans and sanctions under America’s Global Magnitsky Act, which targets corruption and human rights abuses. It describes the ANC as one of Africa’s most corrupt organisations responsible for human rights violations.
“A successful campaign would need to target SA officials responsible for the anti-American measures the government has implemented. Targets should be senior enough to demonstrate Washington’s seriousness. The campaign would strike the officials’ core interests like personal wealth and the ability to travel freely to places like the US.”
Meservey noted among other benefits of such a targeted campaign would be to cut officials off from the money that funded their patronage networks. This could marginalise them within the ANC and government and allow “less ideological members” to assert themselves.
“A targeted campaign could serve as a useful warning to officials of other antagonistic African governments. A demonstration of the US government’s capabilities to make their lives measurably worse might deter further anti-Western actions.”
Meservey said cutting public health funding as the Trump administration had recently done was too indiscriminate to induce the necessary changes in ANC behaviour and would harm the health sector.
He also argued against removing SA from the benefits of the preferential trade programme Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which grants it duty free access to the US market for a range of SA exports.
A targeted campaign could serve as a useful warning to officials of other antagonistic African governments. A demonstration of the US government’s capabilities to make their lives measurably worse might deter further anti-Western actions.
“This also lacks the necessary precision to dissuade the ANC’s malign behaviour. The communities that benefit most from the Agoa largely support SA’s pro-American political parties. Revoking Agoa access would damage SA’s economy, but it would not hurt specific ANC officials or meaningfully threaten their electoral chances. So losing access to Agoa is a price the party is likely willing to pay,” Meservey wrote in the recently published report.
He believed “a little digging may reveal links between specific ANC officials and sanctioned Russian oligarchs. It is a matter of public record that the ANC accepted funds from one such oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, making officials involved in that process vulnerable to secondary sanctions.”
He said the terrorist financing that flows from and through SA — which was a “hub” for Islamic State financing — could also serve as the basis for sanctions. Such financing was flagged by the greylisting of SA by the Financial Action Task Force.
“Given the ANC’s involvement in almost every possible stream of corruption, it is plausible that some of its officials are guilty here as well,” Meservey said.
He noted the Government of National Unity (GNU) contained some pro-American elements and a breakdown in US-SA relations might mean its collapse and empower “truly radical and rabidly anti-American parties like uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) or the EFF.”
Meservey stressed SA’s geographic importance for the US in the context of its competition with China and the need to protect the about 600 American companies operating in SA. SA he said was the dominant economy in its region and is a gateway to the rest of Southern Africa.
“If the US does not meaningfully confront the ANC, the party will continue its decades-long campaign against the West on behalf of the so-called progressive international revolutionary movement.
“If the status quo continues, a full breakdown in the US-SA relationship — and the attendant harm to substantive US interests — will be nearly inevitable.
“Washington’s best chance to prevent this is to target key anti-American officials in SA to marginalise them and warn others of what will come if they do not change course.”
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