Motsepe, the USA and SA

6 February 2020

A writer called Unherd, said in the publication The Post, 'Never apologise, never explain' is one of those phrases that has ended up being attributed to Winston Churchill, like everything. It may have originally been said by Victorian Oxford scholar Benjamin Jowett, along with "Get it over with and let them howl".

What is certain is that Patrice Motsepe, South African billionaire philanthropist and brother in law of President Ramaphosa, either has never heard the expression or else – rather unwisely – decided to ignore it. Speaking at a dinner at Davos, with President Donald Trump of the United States present, Motsepe said that America loves Africa and Africa loves America, and by implication, loves Trump.

While Motsepe might have been gilding the lily a little, he knows, more than most, that Africa and South Africa, in particular, have every reason to love the USA, even if the fashionable left and the ANC do everything to show their distaste for Trump and his country, often in the most discourteous terms imaginable. Like him, or abhor him, President Trump is the leader of the most powerful economy in the world and there is every reason to think that he might well win the next election and continue in that role for the next four years.

American aid to SA has saved tens of thousands of lives. The PEPFAR initiative, started by President George Bush and continued to the present, has contributed many billions of Rand to the fight against Aids. In this year alone, the USA will contribute $732 million (R11billion), helping our country to maintain the largest HIV/Aids prevention and treatment programme in the world and to extend treatment to 2million South Africans this year.

Besides, SA is a significant beneficiary of AGOA, the preferential access to the American market, helping to ensure our positive trade balance with that country (R41 billion). This means we sell more to the US than they buy from us. Compare this with our negative trade balance with China: - R384 billion; China buys far, far less from SA than we buy from them.

The USA, in an inspired choice, sent SA ex-pat, Lana Marks, to our country as ambassador. She was born here and after moving to the USA, she became a significant businesswoman and entrepreneur. She cares about our country and has exactly the skills we need to move our economy to a new level. We have a real friend in Pretoria and she will no doubt do her bit in standing up for us in the current negotiations for the renewal of AGOA. Just ask the workers in our motor industry and you may be surprised at how important AGOA is to their jobs and thousands of others downstream.

No doubt some of those in power, and the anti -Motsepe Twitterati, would prefer it if Ambassador Marks's name was Marx.

Despite all the positives about the USA, one has a very voluble group, on social media, and even prepared to take to the streets at times, to vilify the USA and anyone who speaks well of that country and its leader. After the Motsepe dinner comment, there was an explosion of anger (real or faux) which he would have done well to ignore. He knows what is in SA's interests, even if they do not. Of course, Patrice Motsepe is more accustomed to praise and flattering comments because of his generosity, whereas some of us, more used to the hurtful, sometimes untrue and unjustified accusations of mostly ignorant social media activists and trolls, would have borne the denunciations with a little more fortitude.

Motsepe, as he works to promote SA/USA relations, would have done better to remember the proverb: "The dogs bark but the caravan moves on."

Douglas Gibson is a former opposition chief whip and a former ambassador to Thailand. His website is douglasgibsonsouthafrica.com