JABULANI SIKHAKHANE: Balancing idealism and pragmatism
Government should find a balance between ideals and economic realities since a country’s success lies in making hard choices and painful trade-offs
21 June 2023 - 05:00
The exercise of every country’s sovereignty — the right and ability to determine own policies — requires a careful balance between idealism and pragmatism. This is most pronounced in how each country manages its relations with other nations, especially the ones it does not share the same ideals with but depends on for its economic sustenance.
There are plenty of examples where other countries are managing this, and more distantly how Afrikaner nationalists learnt to tame their hatred of Britain because they needed access to British markets (both financial and goods). ..
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