This week, South Africa’s body politic was jolted by a rapid-fire series of events that would typically unfold over several weeks. It began on Monday with a revelation by DA foreign affairs spokesperson Emma Powell that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special envoy to the US does not hold a valid visa for that country.
This was followed by minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni “revealing” that the security services (which she nominally oversees) were aware a coup was a risk to the country. Not that anyone was planning one immediately, you understand, but “we say that, not that there are no people planning. There are, but we continuously monitor them.”
Then Ramaphosa issued a statement that the DA was “positioning itself as part of a right-wing nexus that seeks to use a foreign state to effect changes to democratically developed national policies”.
Then The Sowetan published part of what it said was a report from the National Security Council (NSC), which answers directly to Ramaphosa, with a front-page headline screaming “Report links DA MP to anti-SA narrative”. It approached Powell for comment, but she declined because she could not see the document.
I can explain. There is no coup. Minister Ntshavheni is a bit of a motormouth, and her English is a little risqué for someone who speaks for the cabinet.
But the air is toxic. Powell led a DA delegation to Washington in February, after Donald Trump had begun to threaten South Africa in public. Andrew Whitfield, the deputy trade & industry minister at the time, went with her. He has since been fired by Ramaphosa for travelling without express permission.
Their trip at the time though was open and transparent. Powell left the country with the good wishes of Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya all over her WhatsApp. In Washington, the DA team held meetings with White House and state department officials and also met Ebrahim Rasool, then still, fleetingly, our ambassador to the US.
For reasons still unexplained, Ramaphosa would later fire Whitfield for his trip. That set the DA off and it announced it would withdraw from the coming national dialogue in protest. Meanwhile, with Rasool back home, Ramaphosa announced he had appointed former finance minister Mcebisi Jonas as his special envoy to “lead negotiations, foster strategic partnerships and engage with US government officials and private sector leaders to promote our nation’s interests”.
Business had wanted former banker Colin Coleman, and over the months that followed questions began to be asked about just what Jonas had been doing since his appointment. But on Monday, Powell announced she had been told by impeccable sources that the Americans had declined to give Jonas a diplomatic visa and would not recognise him as an interlocutor. The internet exploded and — with Trump’s August 1 deadline for 30% tariffs on our exports to the US looming and nerves in Pretoria shredded — so did the state. Powell immediately came under intense public pressure.
Put together, Ntshavheni’s coup warning, Ramaphosa’s allusion to a right-wing nexus and a special NSC report on Powell began to take on a familiar shape. It is the ANC’s way to look for conspiracy even, perhaps especially, where none exists. While Powell bore the brunt of it initially, there’s little doubt that the centre and the target of all this is a financier and Afrikaner activist living in Washington, André Pienaar.
Pienaar is an adventurer — he has money in small nuclear reactors, space and intelligence businesses — but he is also passionately Afrikaner. With wide contacts in Washington, he recently funded and organised a visit by three Afrikaner leaders, led by Freedom Front Plus leader Corné Mulder. They returned with a list of reforms they said the White House had approved to reset relations with Pretoria. His widely viewed platform, National Security News, interviewed Powell after The Sowetan story appeared.
Ramaphosa was right about the genocide in Gaza, but he is wrong not to have South African feet on the ground. Just as he is wrong not to have a fully-staffed embassy in Washington
Like many Afrikaners, Pienaar would have been offended when Ramaphosa — despite a long effort by Afrikaner leaders to reach a cultural accord with the ANC through dialogue with the Thabo Mbeki Foundation — ignored it and promulgated the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act and directly threatened the future of Afrikaans as a language of tuition in our schools. It has opened a profound schism.
With a background in intelligence in South Africa during the 1990s, my informed guess is that, in Ramaphosa’s eyes, Pienaar is the core of his so-called “right-wing nexus” — despite the FF Plus being part of his government of national unity. Pienaar has funded visits (before the GNU) to the US by the DA and has arranged meetings in that country for both ministers Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and Parks Tau.
What’s happening now is hazardous. Pienaar, Powell, the Afrikaner 3, Ramaphosa and Jonas are all solid citizens. Powell was perfectly within her rights to make her statement about Jonas. The editor of The Sowetan was totally within his rights to use the NSC document. The editor and Powell differ sharply on who said what to who. But this is a democracy, and Arena group editors operate without a shred of interference.
And in democracies politicians can and do travel to other countries and badmouth their governments. The possible next UK Prime Minister, Nigel Farage, does it all the time. It’s uncomfortable but it’s not treacherous. Ramaphosa’s insistence that he is the sole owner of our foreign policy is clearly absurd.
You have to feel for Jonas. He has done nothing wrong and I am told that he does indeed have a US visa, but not a diplomatic one. But his focus has shifted from trying to get a trade deal with the US in time. The August 1 deadline seems impossible, unless Trump changes his mind again. Instead, I’m told, he is focused on looking for alternatives. It is difficult to be open about these because you never know what might trigger another Trump tantrum about South Africa.
It is also true that as the chair of MTN Jonas is involved in litigation in the US, triggered by MTN’s 49% holding in Iran’s second-biggest cellphone operator. That investment was made decades before he became chair though, and it is common knowledge that MTN would exit Iran and focus on Africa tomorrow if its 51% partner (the Iranian government) would pay it out.
And until someone shows me just the tiniest bit of evidence, the story about Iran bailing the ANC out of bankruptcy two years ago is entirely unproven and very possibly untrue. And watch Trump wait for a moment to do his own deal with Iran.
What would make a lot of South Africa’s troubles go away is simple. Instead of trying to reset relations with the US, it should instead reset relations with Israel — and it could start now, by reopening our embassy in Tel Aviv. Ramaphosa was right about the genocide in Gaza, but he is wrong not to have South African feet on Israeli ground. Just as he is wrong and neglectful not to have a fully staffed embassy in Washington.
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