PRESIDENT’S ECONOMIC ADVISER
SIMON LINCOLN READER: Trudi Makhaya’s voice of reason what SA needs right now
Finally, someone has to be brave enough to acknowledge, publicly, without fear of insult from demented fringe militias and idealogues, that structural reforms are urgent
In early 2015, a former Downing Street spokesman lamented the state of the relationship between Pretoria and Westminster. In addition to historical beef, he confessed, the hostile narrative appeared to have developed a superstitious extension. I tried to explain that it wasn’t only thugs such as the Gupta brothers who were in Jacob Zuma’s ears, but also druids such as Hlaudi Motsoeneng, and this was reducing aspects of our foreign relations to spells and trances. If you are serious about negotiating more equitable trade or aid arrangements with Whitehall, we concluded, quoting gossip about the West you heard from a talking donkey is not helpful. But there did appear to be faint interest in diplomatically repairing a relationship Zuma had relegated in favour of other bent countries. Setting up a commons research group would have been required, but who was competent to lead or participate from the South African side? The first person who crossed my mind was Trudi Makhaya. So I called ...
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