CAIPHUS KGOSANA | Watch your tone — that goes to both South Africa and the US

I was contacted by the press attaché of the US embassy in March asking for space in the Sunday Times for an op-ed penned by their relatively new ambassador, Reuben Brigety II.

I was the opinions editor of the paper in my previous life, so such requests aren’t unusual.

It started off, as most opinion pieces do, in a mild and descriptive manner. Brigety reminisced on the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and how as a young man growing up in America’s Deep South he was in awe of this “icon of courage and righteous struggle” taking his first step as a free man alongside his (then) wife Winnie.

The piece then takes a sudden sharp turn, dispenses with the diplomatic niceties and adopts a combative tone as Brigety remonstrates at perceived ANC hostility towards the US.

He takes exception with an excerpt from a report containing resolutions of the ANC’s 55th elective congress on international relations. He was particularly offended by an assertion from the governing party that the war in the Ukraine “can no longer be described simply as a Russia-Ukraine war — it is primarily a conflict between the US and US-led Nato and Russia in pursuit of the objectives of the so-called Wolfowitz doctrine”.

This juicy titbit was reserved for a sumptuous press conference last Thursday where the top US envoy stopped just shy of accusing Ramaphosa’s administration of crucifying Jesus Christ himself.

Brigety labels this “demonstrably false” and bluntly accuses some in the ANC of professing solidarity with the oppressed people of the world while denying the agency of Ukrainian people.  

But he was just getting warmed up. He goes on to spell out in detail “the facts about my country the ANC conference report deliberately omitted”.

Number one: 600 American companies operate in SA, employing some 220,000 people and generating roughly 10% of the GDP.

The report, he continued, also omitted to mention how through the generosity of American people R16bn has been contributed to the fight against HIV/Aids via the American President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), saving the lives of millions of South Africans.

He further reminds the ANC of the preferential access to American markets SA goods enjoy under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), realising R39bn in trade revenue for SA in 2021 alone.

As I read on, I kept asking myself if this was a written by a diplomat or a politician. What I didn’t know at the time was that Brigety was dying to tell the ANC how his government had evidence he was willing to stake his life on, that SA shipped arms to Russia on a sanctioned vessel that docked in Simon’s Town in December.

This juicy titbit was reserved for a sumptuous press conference last Thursday where the top US envoy stopped just shy of accusing Ramaphosa’s administration of crucifying Jesus Christ himself.

It took a lot of diplomatic efforts on both sides of the Atlantic for Brigety to partially walk back his accusations with a rather vague late-night tweet on Friday to “correct any misimpressions left by my public remarks”. It was after a tense meeting with our foreign minister Naledi Pandor, who unequivocally expressed Pretoria’s strong objections to his tone.

Now here’s my take. Brigety did not go on a frolic of his own; he had the complete backing of the US state department, if not the White House itself.

No ambassador (even of the powerful US) would ever level such serious accusations at their host country without the tacit approval of their government.

US officials who met Sydney Mufamadi and the team Ramaphosa dispatched to hear the Americans out on the Lady R matter told the New York Times they presented strong evidence to their South African counterparts to back up allegations we loaded arms onto the cargo ship. Mufamadi denies this.

Either the Americans were fed wrong intelligence (this is a country that waged war in Iraq on the back of wrong intelligence) or they are handing us a long rope to hang ourselves.

I suspect Brigety took it too far in that press conference. Instead of warning his host country in a rather diplomatic manner to tread carefully on potential sanctions-busting moves because Uncle Sam is watching, he burst in like in a bull in a China shop and went on the rampage.

SA government officials deny anything was loaded onto Lady R. They maintain it just offloaded a pre-Covid order for our special forces.

So either the Americans were fed wrong intelligence (this is a country that waged war in Iraq on the back of wrong intelligence) or they are handing us a long rope to hang ourselves.

The consequences of arming Russia are too ghastly to contemplate for SA. True to his nature, Ramaphosa has kicked for touch and appointed a commission to investigate. But our arms are old and rusty, I don’t see us supplying anything useful to Putin’s military.

The ANC, though, needs to check its tone. It’s well and good for your cadres to spew anti-West rhetoric inside conference halls, but the party must be careful how these sentiments come out in official documents. You can’t just accuse the US of stoking the war in Ukraine and expect it to take it on the chin. They’ll remind you where your bread is buttered, and it won’t be nice.

Joel Netshitenzhe, policy guru par excellence, would never have allowed such clumsy wording to be printed under the party’s banner.

As for Brigety, his abrasive demeanour does more harm than good. He’s not a politician, he’s a diplomat and must conduct himself with the requisite decorum. Some hardliners in the SA government and the ruling alliance want him gone.

That won’t happen now. State is not about to recall its ambassador; that would be tantamount to admitting the US got it wrong on the Lady R. Intelligence mistakes are never owned up to.

He will see out the remainder of the Biden term here in SA, but don’t expect to see him back should the Democrats be re-elected late next year.