SA’s foreign policy does little to help trade imbalance with China and India
Kabelo Khumalo’s article (“SA’s vehicle trade deficit with China and India hits R90bn”, May 26) refers.
There may well be “a deeper de-industrialisation crisis… expos[ing] deeper structural weaknesses in South Africa’s automotive industry”, and high electricity costs must be a factor (one of many own goals), but the fact is trade between South Africa and China is a replica of colonial core-periphery trading patterns.
China is not South Africa’s friend, at least not when they can make a quick buck. India is also out to take advantage of South Africa’s weak economy, though it’s not as excessive as China.
It’s very interesting that the EU remains “the indispensable market for South African-made vehicles”, with “the EU and the UK collectively absorb[ing] 80.3% of total South African vehicle exports, with the country enjoying a healthy surplus with the region”.
Much of South Africa-EU trade is intra-industry trade, which is beneficial for pushing the country up the value chain, whereas with China it is inter-industry trade, which pushes South Africa down. And it looks like it’s getting worse.
This again exposes how skewed our foreign policies are. We are buddy-buddy with China through Brics which, though a geopolitically increasingly vacuous forum, is still diplomatically compromising, yet we are cold with the EU, our best quality trading partner.
President Cyril Ramaphosa recently snubbed French President Emmanuel Macron by refusing an invitation to a France-Africa summit, and we are de facto allies with Russia in its barbarous and murderous onslaught against Ukraine and, by proxy, against the EU-Nato states.
For the moment, probably in part because of Trump’s antics, the Europeans are showing patience, but how long will this last? At some point Pretoria will have to choose, and indications are the Europeans aren’t impressed with our foreign policy, including our voting patterns at the UN.
Francois Theron
Via Business Day online
Ideological bluster is costing us at the trade table
Your editorial opinion (“Business should unite behind SA’s Agoa case”, May 27) refers.
Addressing BEE and property expropriation is fundamental to improving trade relations with the US, including South Africa’s continued participation in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). Far from “grandstanding”, addressing these issues are important enablers.
It is indeed desirable that our various business community formations get onto the same page, but that has to start with understanding what inhibits growth, what constrains foreign direct investment and what has caused South Africa to be an outlier in respect of Donald Trump’s US.
By far the majority of America’s trading partners, friend and foe alike, have cut deals in the past two years. South Africa is part of a small minority of countries full of ideological bluster that remain outside the tent.
US ambassador to South Africa Leo Brent Bozell III has repeatedly stated that the US is open for business, yet some business organisations continue to sing the government’s song and deny the patently obvious. Those that do have essentially been “captured” by deployed cadres in suits.
Sakeliga have a point, as does the Western Cape provincial government, that if we can’t get everyone over the line to speak as one, then let’s cut out the bureaucrats. It would be interesting to hear why they shouldn’t do so.
Martin Neethling
Via Business Day online
SA could do with more ethics in choosing its friends
South Africa’s relationship with Iran has been very damaging to this country (“Why SA cannot afford silence on the war against Iran”, May 27). We ought to be more careful — and a lot more ethical — in choosing our friends.
Investing in relationships with autocracies that brutally suppress their people and share none of our values, including the commitment to individual freedom that South Africans fought so hard to secure, can only ever waste our endeavour and treasure.
Moreover, terrorist regimes whose very rationale for existence requires the destruction of other countries, in addition to the aggressive domination of everyone in their immediate neighbourhood, present an inherently unstable relationship proposition.
In short, friendship with a regional and global threat such as Iran could only ever end in disaster. Sooner or later one of the many adversaries Iran is committed to destroying was going to move to neutralise the threat.
Post-revolution Iran was the worst horse to back. Don’t let the ANC pop down to the tote for you the next time you feel a flutter coming on.
Stuart Meyer
Via Business Day online
Government’s lack of action is enabling xenophobia
The first wave of xenophobic violence to hit democratic South Africa, in 2008, scared me the most. I will never forget the necklacing of a Mozambican in the Ramaphosa squatter camp on the East Rand.
On the same day The Times newspaper had a picture of then president Thabo Mbeki sipping tea in Japan. He didn’t cut short his state visit to attend to the developing crisis at home.
It’s a pity President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet ignored the warning signs when Operation Dudula chased foreign nationals away from public health facilities. The perpetrators should have been criminally charged.
March and March is worse than Dudula (“Police warn anti-immigration groups no-one may order foreigners out of SA”, May 14). They are tribalistic, rude and selfish. When the KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson, who is originally from Limpopo, was called a foreigner by supporters of March and March, Ramaphosa and his cabinet should have defended him.
How can not understanding Zulu make you a foreigner in your own country?
Lucas Ntyintyane
Via email
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