SA’s point man in the US on the task ahead

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RYK VAN NIEKERK: The United States of America is South Africa’s second-largest trading partner and a very, very important link in our economic chain. However, South Africa’s relationship with the world’s largest economy is strained due to, among other things, political affiliations with China and Russia. This strain has placed trade agreements favourable to South Africa unfortunately back on the negotiation table. If they are revoked or changed it could have a significant negative impact on our economy.

Ebrahim Rasool is the newly appointed South African ambassador to the US. This is his second term, as he also represented South Africa in Washington between 2010 and 2015 under the Obama administration.

He is by definition our point man in the US, our country’s most important diplomat.

He replaces Nomaindiya Mfeketo, who was pretty much a disaster during her term before she resigned owing to an apparent illness. But there was a lot of unhappiness with her performance in Washington, and Ebrahim Rasool has a big job to repair the relationship between South Africa and the US.

Ebrahim is on the line. Ebrahim, thank you so much for your time today. How does it feel to be back in Washington – and have you hit the ground running?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: Well, there was no choice but to hit the ground running. It’s very, very cold here. For the last few days it has been minus 12 degrees, but I still have my coat from the first term – it’s a bit bigger, but it’s keeping me warm.

So we’ve had to hit the ground running in a sense. I’ve had to come here and present my credentials to then President [Joe] Biden. I’ve had to attend the inauguration of President Trump.

Then I think we’ve got the embassy working quite hard to be ready for what [our] president has tasked me with in terms of what we call ‘Operation Reset’ – how we rebuild our relationship with the United States of America.

So I think that those are urgent tasks, especially given the pace at which President Donald Trump is operating in the USA.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: The relationship is not the best, and your predecessor did not ensure that the relationship between South Africa and the US was optimal. You’re talking about Operation Reset. Can you maybe elaborate exactly what your short-term tasks are?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: Look, the short-term task I think is that we need to become a great team as Team South Africa.

It cannot only be the embassy staff; it has to be the private sector, which has offices and operations and interests in the USA, that we need to pull in. It has to be all the entities that must be pulled into one team. So that’s the first thing – building a team that is really up to the task.

The second task would be that we must get to understand the new administration, who the players are because we are not dealing with very many familiar faces. There are familiar faces like Marco Rubio, who is now Secretary of State, but there are a whole lot of new people coming in.

We need to understand that and not deal with it in a way that was usual for diplomacy because this is not usual diplomacy.

And then the third thing is to identify the critical objectives that South Africa needs to pursue.

Agoa [the African Growth and Opportunity Act] is top of the list for us – maintaining the investments and expanding [those] that we have by 600 US companies is critical for us. I think fighting and understanding the implications of the executive orders, among others on Pepfar [the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief], the fund that helps us with fighting HIV/Aids and tuberculosis.

So I think we have an agenda, we have a task list, and I think that that’s what we are pursuing in the United States of America.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: What is your perception of the current relationship between South Africa and the US?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: I think that there is an acknowledgement by the president [Cyril Ramaphosa], the government of national unity, our Minister [of International Relations and Cooperation] Ronald Lamola, and our team here that, when we say Operation Reset, we acknowledge that something has gone wrong, something must be repaired.

We know that South Africa has taken principled positions on matters like Israel and Palestine.

We have taken a non-aligned stance on the Ukraine/Russia situation.

I think that that has not found universal favour in the United States and therefore I think we need to be able, one, to explain ourselves a lot more.

I think, two, we need to understand that, for example, as the Israel/Palestine ceasefire lengthens, that it removes pressure from South Africa to be the spokesperson for peace in that area.

And so I think we need to prioritise the matters that matter to our people and to our country, particularly with regard to our economic relationships with the United States of America.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: You state that you need to explain those relationships between South Africa and China, as well as Russia. What will you explain?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: For example, we would need to understand that Brics is a conglomerate of emerging markets.

People [do not realise] that when emerging markets come together they don’t speak the kind of politics and share the kind of political values with everyone. When we do speak about political values, we have a closer relationship with other democracies like Brazil and like China.

That’s why we have two arrangements. We have Brics, which is emerging markets, we have emerging democracies, and therefore we have Ibsa – India, Brazil, and South Africa.

For example, it has been the Ibsa group within Brics that has resisted the idea of de-dollarisation and not trading with the dollar. We understand the importance of the dollar to our own economies, and we are not up for agendas that promote de-dollarisation.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: The key policy affecting South Africa, which you referred to earlier, which is back – perhaps for the wrong reasons – on the negotiating table, is the Agoa Act, which allows South Africa and other African countries to export goods to the US without tariffs; and there’s also a bilateral trade agreement. How serious do you think the Americans are [on revoking] those agreements or changing them? Maybe, put differently, do they regard that as a stick?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: I think it’ll always be a stick because it’s a unilateral trade agreement that it is something that the US has gifted Africa, and therefore they are the ones in control of it. So it will always be a stick.

But I think what has emerged since Mr Trump’s executive orders is that tariffs are going to be fairly universal and going to be a way in which the United States raises external revenue. Therefore they’ve started off with Canada and Mexico, their immediate neighbours.

They are looking at the universal imposition of tariffs. They are looking, for example, [where] there is a tariff imbalance between the United States and another country they will balance it out, meaning that if the United States charges another country 3% tariffs and that country charges the United States 10% tariffs, the United States will raise [theirs] to 10%.

So I think that there is a universal way in which President Trump has identified how tariffs will work, and that may undercut Agoa in some particular way.

But then there is the very special case of the African Growth and Opportunities Act, and I think all African countries are anxious that with universal tariffs we may lose some of the benefits of Agoa. But I think our job is to persuade the United States that we are not a continent or even a country that threatens US jobs in the same way that the current administration perceives Mexico and Canada as threatening the interests of the United States of America.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: It’s going to be interesting. Donald Trump has warned about tariffs; he’s serious about it – and our agreements or trade agreements largely benefit from lower tariffs. Have you seen anything from the Trump administration that could, from a tariff perspective and just because of Trump’s position towards tariffs, affect our country?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: The fact is that there are a number of Congress members and senators in the USA who have particularly threatened removing South Africa from the African Growth and Opportunities Act.

Those are both what I would call political actions against us based on particularly the Israel/Palestine situation, as well as economic ones …

Because South Africa, under Agoa, is probably the only country in Africa that brings manufactured goods like BMWs onto the US market.

So it’s no longer a matter of South Africa simply exporting raw materials to the US. In fact, 70% of our things that we export to the USA have a manufactured element to them.

And for some that was not the intention of Agoa. Agoa was a way to get raw materials to the US. What we need to do is to say: ‘These are not threatening your automotive industry. These are not threatening.’

In fact, if anything, things like nuclear medical isotopes that we export to the US are absolutely beneficial for the fight against cancer in the United States of America.

So when I speak about explaining ourselves, I think that these are the things we must make clear – that we are not a country that undermines the economy of the United States. We add to it, we don’t subtract from it, and therefore we must make our case for remaining in Agoa as tariff-free as we can be.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: You have met Donald Trump a few times. When last did you shake his hand?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: Look, it was difficult to shake his hand during the current inauguration, both from the sheer numbers of people and the heightened security around Mr Trump.

But we had occasion to be hosted by him in 2012 when he was a private citizen and I was the ambassador. He raised funds for the Red Cross Society of America, and he invited us, just three ambassadors, to Mar-a-Lago.

He listened to a speech I made there and came up to congratulate me. So hopefully he thinks that my words are still fine.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: He said you deliver a very good speech, if I remember correctly. What do you think of Donald Trump and the perceptions around him – which are in many cases negative? But what are your perceptions about Trump?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: Look, I think that Mr Trump is at best an enigma. You may want to buy into all the stereotypes about him. You may want to judge him on the worst actions that you have in your mind about him. But as an ambassador, you don’t deal with you own feelings about the person.

In fact, if anything, I think that he presents [himself] particularly to his base, and more increasingly to Americans, as a decisive leader. Americans want someone who can act. They are tired of the gridlock that exists in Washington.

He’s a decisive man. He sometimes gets it right, sometimes gets it wrong. Whatever your feelings about it, I think people just feel that there is movement in government.

I think we can just make sure that there is very little collateral damage for South Africa out of this.

So hopefully the fact that – there are enough people who know me in Washington, [who] I think will be able to attest to the fact that South Africa can be an honest interlocutor within the political process here.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: I think it’s going to be an interesting term for you. How long is your contract for?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: Look, I think generally ambassadors don’t stay for more than four years. But we’ll see.

I think that I wouldn’t see myself spending more than that time in Washington.

It also gives me a good deadline that I’m not here to park, that I’m here to finish a job and then go back home.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: That’s a very, very important task. Just how big is your team there in Washington?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: Well, the team is not as big as it was the first time.

But in Cape Town we grow up with a saying, ‘klein maar ge-train’. So if you don’t have the big size, you must make sure that it is a competent team.

I’ve had my meetings with the team. I feel that there’s an enthusiasm [and] I think it’s up to me to bring some of my experiences of how things ought to be done, and get the team activated.

My sense is they are up to the task. I think I’ve seen enthusiasm for the job. They understand how critical this is for our country.

And I can tell you that I’ve got people working in order to, for example, as their first task, make sense of every executive order – and look for the implication for South Africa.

And we will be able to alert our government as to what actions need to be taken in the best interest of South Africa.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: Just lastly – and you referred to it earlier during this interview – is the role of the private sector in the dealings with the US government. How involved was the private sector, and especially our big companies, with the embassy in the US, in contributing to building this relationship with the US?

And what do you foresee as a perfect scenario for the public and private sector to jointly try and foster the healthiest possible relationship with the US?

EBRAHIM RASOOL: When I was here the first time we did build this concept of ‘Team South Africa’.

At that time, banks like Standard Bank were based in New York, Old Mutual was opening an office in New York, mining companies like Anglo American at that time had mining interests, and Sasol certainly was one of the biggest investments in the USA from across the world in Louisiana.

And so all of them together with Brand South Africa, together with SA Tourism and so forth, were part of our strategic planning.

Of course, if we now look at it, there are new players like RMB, like Glencore and Sibanye-Stillwater; they are all here.

Nando’s is very strongly represented here as a South African company.

I think that they are going to be absolutely crucial in helping South Africa make the case, because I think we must overcome an element of a trust deficit.

I think the concept of a government of national unity is absolutely crucial to help us overcome that trust deficit, and the private sector can certainly add weight to it.

For example, someone like Elon Musk is a very, very important player who knows the South African private sector.

We are hoping that it is going to be a joint case. This is an all-in mission that I think we need to run in the USA, given the stakes that we have hanging on it.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: Ebrahim, we’ll have to leave it there. Thank you so much for your time today. That was Ebrahim Rasool, the South African ambassador to the United States of America.

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