It can’t be easy being a SA diplomat abroad. On paper at least, our ambassadors and high commissioners and their corps of attendant professionals represent a country that despite its glaring faults serves, or should serve, as a role model for young yet challenged democracies around the world. But in so much of our international affairs we are more at home in the company of tyrants and losers. By habit and instinct we’re more comfortable when ensconced within the circle of the aggrieved and the passive (or active) aggressive. We prefer the hard done-by and the downright dangerous. We insist on our right to become a pariah.
Witness last weekend’s love fest involving President Cyril Ramaphosa and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. What greater compliment to pay our president than to have him deliver the message that Saudi Arabia would like to join Brics? What more glowing commendation for us as South Africa, a founder member of the global club that is meant as a counterweight to the US, than to be chosen to help ease the path to Brics membership for the outpost of barbarity that is Saudi Arabia? They’ll feel entirely at home in their new club.
It’s all part of a self-righteous search for a New World Order (another one), we’re told, and “standing up’’ to the US in public (while co-operating with Washington unctuously in private) has become an article of faith for those who profess to want this brighter future. The problem is a “unipolar world’’. It’s no secret that the big winner is China, which is all fine because they can be trusted in a way that the US can’t, or so we’re told. After all, it’s just no good that the US wants to export its model of democracy to the rest of the world. We should be able to choose whether we wouldn’t prefer the surveillance state that is hi-tech Chinese-style autocracy at work. Shouldn’t we have the choice?
Central to this misguided effort (to create a bipolar world?) is a hypocritical aversion to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which is bad we’re told, (it’s a monopoly, dude!) but mostly by people who are good at stashing piles of dollars away. We must hold our foreign currency in something else, preferably the Chinese renminbi, because this will weaken US “hegemony’’, a pejorative term for US guardianship. Et tu, Cyril!
Under the doleful shadow cast by Beijing, the Saudi princes can luxuriate in the novelty of a political order that eschews Uncle Sam in favour of Chairman Mao.
Faux opposition to the US, a political stance taken by the pre-1994 Afrikaner right-wing as much as it is by the ANC, is in South Africa’s national interest, we’re told. Perhaps this a counterintuitive masterstroke at work, which involves deliberately alienating yourself from the world’s richest and most powerful country. It’s all about preparing for a future when the US will be just one of many superpowers, which will make things a lot more peaceful, it is argued. Loving the Chinese Communist Party is an investment made by the wisest of nations. That’s us too. Anything but the US.
So we’re always first at the party when an anti-Western, oppressor regime needs a bit of democratic validation. Take Saudi Arabia, for example. By just about any standard it’s the world’s most awful country, and there’s hardly a single infringement of the most basic human rights that is not routine in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is an enduring bloodstain on the human story.
This purveyor of international terrorism and blood-chilling social and legal practices has long been one of the world’s biggest oil suppliers and purchasers of expensive, hi-tech weapons from the West. And with Iran’s theocrats glowering from the parapets, the Saudis were considered the better of two evils. That is until they hacked journalist Jamal Khashoggi to death in Istanbul in 2018.
Lately, Saudi’s relations with US President Joe Biden have soured further, which is just fine with the kingdom’s 37-year-old leader, a guy so hip he goes by an acronym, MBS.
If you’ve got a beef with the US, there’s only one option for you, and that’s Brics. It’s unjudgmental, forgiving. With Brics you get an empathetic embrace and an all-expenses paid trip to China to witness at first-hand how they’ve lifted millions out of poverty and into mind-numbing drudgery.
Under the doleful shadow cast by Beijing, the Saudi princes can luxuriate in the novelty of a political order that eschews Uncle Sam in favour of Chairman Mao. In Xi Jinping China has a leader who is turning a one-party state into a one-man state. With a possible Brics membership looming, even a Muslim nation like Saudi Arabia finds it within itself to condone China’s detention and “re-education’’ of Uyghur Muslims. Russia invading Ukraine? No problem for Brics either. Is Taiwan next? Help yourself. National self-interest is what matters.
No wonder other freedom-loving countries are clamouring to join, usually invited by China. Argentina (arguably the world’s most reckless country), Turkey (led by a democratically elected dictator) and Egypt (led by a military dictator) are among the countries to have signalled their intentions to throw their weight behind the struggle. Women-hating Iran doesn’t want to miss out either. It’s a win-win, as the Chinese like to put it, and being freed of US hegemony also allows the waging of war unhindered. What’s not to like? If nothing else, the threat of paid-up Brics membership is certain to increase one’s bargaining power with US arms merchants.
Normally, given that we are a democratic country that thinks of itself as free, we’d have a problem with countries invading and threatening others. In the case of Ukraine, not so much. Besides we’re toeing the Brics line on this one. We have to. We think the answer to Russia’s actions in Ukraine is, well, compromise and a more balanced UN. Luckily, Putin agrees, and so does Brics.
Bombs away, Vlad!
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