LETTER: Ramaphosa has no hope of improving SA’s wellbeing

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his state of the nation (Sona) address last week that SA’s international relations efforts were focused on advancing the wellbeing of South Africans. However, just as the ANC has signally failed on this score, so is advancing the wellbeing of humanity well beyond the possibilities of our now much diminished country, which was recently displaced by Rwanda as the subcontinental regional power.

The Brics membership paints a target on SA’s back, and US President Donald Trump is now widely expected to terminate our African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) membership, supposedly because of the Expropriation Act. This, together with the cuts in US development aid, the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) in particular, is bound to hurt both the domestic economy and many vulnerable South Africans. 

Expropriation is only a pretext though. Trump, who seems to hate the entire world, was in any event intent on reducing most foreign aid programmes. The real reason for his antipathy towards SA is its pronounced anti-Americanism and pro-China and Russia orientations, as US secretary of state Marco Rubio clarified.

Had it not been for this, our diplomats would have had a better chance of keeping SA in Washington’s good books. In this context, SA’s déjà vu Group of 20 (G20) slogan — Solidarity, Equality & Sustainable Development — is perhaps unfortunate. Trump will probably read that as another version of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). 

François Theron 
Pretoria 

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