In just four days US President Donald Trump’s 90-day deadline before imposing a minimum 30% tariff on all imports into the US expires.
Trump is erratic and he may well extend the deadline again as he has more than 100 trade deals to complete in that impossible time. He is also a bit crazy and may simply impose the tariffs on any country that hasn’t at least the outlines of a trade deal already in place.
That would include South Africa — and while he may exclude a few minerals, 30% tariffs would devastate this economy. The US is by far our single most valuable big trading partner because of the high-value products we sell there.
Cars lead the list and already Mercedes-Benz has temporarily stopped making vehicles in East London. The US is also the largest export market for the BMW X3s made in Pretoria. Add to that the likelihood that Nissan could soon cease production here and the industrial consequences are utterly chilling.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House in May ended inconclusively but last week a delegation of Afrikaners, in the form of the Freedom Front Plus party and others, held talks with senior White House officials and came away with a list of demands South Africa had to meet in order to win Trump over.
It is easy to dismiss the Afrikaner trip as unauthorised. But the officials they met were real. The delegation — FF+ leader Corné Mulder, Theo de Jager, leader of the Southern African Agriculture Initiative, and Gerhard Papenfus, leader of Neasa, a large employer group — undertook not to mention the names of the officials they met but only to use their titles.
Google fixed that. One was the National Security Council senior director for the Middle East, who also covers Africa. That would be Wayne Walls. Another was the NSC Africa director. That would be Brendan McNamara.
The meeting was set up by André Pienaar, a South African financier now living in the US but with deep roots back home. He funded the delegation who, with the officials, crafted a four-point “agreement” they say could settle relations with the US. The implication is that it could form part of a trade deal if Ramaphosa found a way to sell it to the rest of the ANC.
First, Pretoria would declare farm attacks a priority crime and bring these attacks into the ambit of the Hawks. Second, the government would denounce the song Kill the Boer. Third, all land expropriation would be fairly compensated and, finally, US investments into South Africa are to be free of any BEE regulations.
It’s amazing the ANC cannot accommodate the Afrikaners. Both once chased a racial nationalist dream and chase it again now
Think of these conditions what you will but they present Ramaphosa, who hasn’t had a functioning ambassador in Washington for three years, with a potentially riveting dilemma: would he trade them for a 10% tariff on exports to the US rather than 30%? That would save around R29bn a year, enough even to cover a two- percentage point VAT increase!
It’s amazing the ANC cannot accommodate the Afrikaners. Both once chased a racial nationalist dream and chase it again now.
On the one hand the ANC idolises Afrikaner industrial achievement — the creation of Eskom, Iscor and other state-controlled monopolies. On the other it demonises them for the cruelty of apartheid. The tension between two powerful nationalisms and the ANC’s failure to resolve that friction is a core theme of our lives today.
In April last year, Afrikaner groups working with ANC veterans like Snuki Zikalala drew up a charter for what they called a “cultural accord” with the government.
“We should not allow ourselves to differ so vehemently about the past that we destroy the future,” they suggested. “We want to help create the conditions for Afrikaners to live and prosper in a way that is sustainable. We cannot change the past but we can co-operate to tackle the crises we are facing today.”
Ramaphosa responded by promulgating the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill, which may force Afrikaans schools to teach in English to accommodate more black pupils.
Ramaphosa did that to try to save the ANC in the then coming elections. It didn’t. Instead, with Trump now in the White House, he has a far bigger Afrikaner problem to deal with. And his special Envoy to the US, Mcebisi Jonas, has not been seen once in the 80 days since he was appointed.
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