News out of Washington that a bipartisan collection of congressmen is lobbying not only to hoof SA out of the African Growth and Opportunity Act programme, but also to stop us from chairing this year’s meeting of the Agoa Forum, makes for grave reading. It is not clear that everybody in Pretoria who ought to understand the gravity of what is at play does so.
It is in this context that we ought to wish President Cyril Ramaphosa good luck and Godspeed on his planned trip to Moscow and Kyiv. His purpose is twofold: to persuade President Vladimir Putin to stay away from SA during the Brics summit and to tell him that his insistence on the matter is causing harm to us, and, when in Kyiv, his task beyond the photo opportunity, is to persuade President Volodymyr Zelensky that our nonalignment is real.
Equally, it is good that the president is sending emissaries to Washington to discuss and expand on the country’s nonalignment with a specific focus on Agoa. They, too, have a crucial task.
It goes almost without saying that these are interventions required as a result of self-inflicted harm so foolish it causes a headache to merely read about it. But be that as it may, we ought to applaud the president for taking matters into his hands and for attempting to communicate our positioning better and in person, and for acting in the interests of our country and economy.
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