There is more to diplomacy than this
US ambassador L Brent Bozell III’s article, published a day before the Sixth South Africa Investment Conference, was a welcome reminder that the South Africa-US relationship is far more layered than the political disputes of the past year might suggest (“The art of the possible”, March 30).
His emphasis on practical economic partnership, investment flows and mutual opportunity reflects a diplomatic instinct that deserves broader appreciation.
Conventional commentary on South Africa-US relations tend to fixate on the headline frictions rooted in the ideological distance between the White House and Luthuli House. As much as the political impasse between the two is real and consequential, it represents only one layer of a multidimensional nature of statecraft.
Modern diplomacy does not operate solely through the channel of heads of state and party headquarters. It is simultaneously conducted through business-to-business partnerships and people-to-people ties. Bozell’s mention of the more than 500 American companies in South Africa and the over $23bn in bilateral trade is not an incidental statistic; it’s a representation of a web of mutual economic dependency that has its own diplomatic logic. One that is independent of the relationship between presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Donald Trump.
South African businesses and decision-makers would do well to internalise that the state-to-state relationship is only one register of a far broader set of diplomatic interactions, and the political noise at the top does not foreclose the possibilities at every other level.
The art of the possible, as ambassador Bozell rightly invokes it, is practised not only in embassies and summit rooms, but in boardrooms, community partnerships and investment commitments made despite political uncertainty. The task is to ensure that the multilayered nature of the relationship is actively cultivated, not left to chance or hostage to the next diplomatic incident.
Ofentse Donald Davhie
Centre for Risk Analysis
Sahara slave trade worse than Atlantic one
Why does Adekeye Adebajo condemn the horrible Atlantic slave trade but not the even more horrible Sahara slave trade? (“The black Atlantic’s dogged quest for slavery reparations”, March 30). The UN does the same, ignoring the worse “crime against humanity”.
The Sahara slave trade captured African men and women and transported them across the Sahara or along the Indian Ocean coast to Muslim countries in the Middle East. It lasted longer than the Atlantic one and caught more slaves. The African men were often castrated and African women treated as sex slaves, their babies frequently killed at birth. In the Atlantic slave trade African men and women were allowed to marry and had families in America.
In addition, every victim of the Atlantic slave trade was caught by an African slave-trading businessman who made a fortune selling them to the Europeans. When Britain ended slavery in 1833 the African slave traders were horrified and sent deputations to Europe to protest.
Who should pay reparations to whom? Should the Muslim countries pay reparations to the African countries whose citizens they castrated and enslaved? Should the descendants of the black slave traders in Africa pay reparations to the descendants of the black slaves in America?
The problem is that African-Americans are now the world’s richest black people, far richer than most blacks in Africa.
Andrew Kenny
Kleinmond
Rassie’s new secret weapon?
I was lucky enough to attend the 10 Sopranos concert on Sunday at the Joburg Theatre. Fabulous African operatic voices belting out all the favourites, from a double-tempo Swing Low, Sweet Chariot to the Liverpool football anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone. Strong, beautiful African voices.
I imagined the impact of them singing the national anthem at Ellis Park shortly before the All Blacks’ haka and how their high notes would inject even the nose-bleed seats with such fervour to make the haka afterwards seem inconsequential. Please, rugby, give it some thought. Like LIV Golf, the spirit of our dramatic, big-voiced African divas would bring fresh air to the anthem.
They are a formidable force, these 10 sopranos — dressed in gowns of green and gold they would be sensational — and perhaps lead us later in an encore of Shosholoza. We need our own rugby songs, not borrowed ones.
This could be Rassie Erasmus’ new secret weapon.
Peter Sullivan
Killarney
Life is full of temptations
Luke Feltham’s most recent column refers (“Meta’s reckoning could change the internet forever”, March 30).
“Kaley” is no more a victim here than the hundreds of thousands of South African teen alcoholics and tik addicts in, say, rural Transkei, addicted due to the billions of tax rands poured into the region in social grants each month.
Life will always be full of temptations towards bad or self-destructive behaviour. You can rail against the temptations all you like. Or, like most normal people, choose to say no or use and manage the tools productively.
This is like fining knife manufacturers because people are inclined to stab each other.
Stuart Meyer
Via Business Day online
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