South Africa

Jennifer Davis, an American anti-apartheid activist, passed away on October 15. Among her many legacies, she mobilized public pressure on the U.S. Congress to overturn President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. Born in Johannesburg and a graduate of the prestigious University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), she and her husband eventually moved to New York. Soon after, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Like other white, highly-educated anti-apartheid activists, she was strongly influenced by the racism of Nazi Germany and the subsequent holocaust.  From 1981 to 2000 she was the director of the American Committee on Africa that coordinated NGO opposition to apartheid and made it a mass movement. She went beyond the Sullivan Principles, which called on American companies doing business in South Africa to treat their South African employees the same as they treated their employees in the United States. She pushed for Americans to boycott South African goods, and for Americans to divest from companies that profited from apartheid.  Within the governing African National Congress, there is frequent criticism that the United States came late and only half-heartedly to the anti-apartheid struggle. Jennifer Davis is a reminder of the important role played by civil society in heightening public awareness in the United States of apartheid—which eventually led to real legislative action—and that the international anti-apartheid movement acquired significant American support.

On October 23, Mmusi Maimane resigned as the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA). His resignation was preceded by that of the DA mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba on October 21, and immediately followed by that of the party’s federal chairperson, Athol Trollip. Maimane resigned from parliament on October 24. The slew of high-profile DA resignations can be viewed in the context of the resignation of former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille in 2018. Maimane’s resignation appears to have been triggered by an internal DA finding that he bore heavy personal responsibility for the party’s poor showing in the May 2019 elections, though the context for his and the other party resignations appears to be race.  A quarter-century after the end of apartheid, most whites enjoy a standard of living common to developed countries, while most black South Africans remain poor, despite the emergence of a handful of black millionaires and a slowly growing black middle class. Maimane and Mashaba are black, de Lille is Coloured (the largest racial group in Cape Town.) Mashaba and de Lille have explicitly complained that a white cabal within the party has worked against their efforts on behalf of “transformation” that could address black poverty and make the party more attractive to the black majority.  Helen Zille, the white former mayor of Cape Town and premier of the Western Cape in 2017 had been ostracized by the DA over her comment that colonialism was not “all bad.” But she was just elected the party’s federal council chairperson, a senior position. Her return is seen by commentators as a sign that the DA is moving to the right and becoming more explicitly the party of white interests. Mashaba tied his resignation to her rise: “The election of Zille as chair of the federal council is a victory for people opposed to my belief systems.” He added, “I cannot reconcile myself with people who believe that race is not important in their discussion of inequalities.” Historically, the DA has been the “white” party, and most of its electoral support has come from whites, Coloureds, and Asians. Together those racial minorities are about 20 percent of South Africa’s population, and the DA’s share of the national vote has been between 20 and 22 percent in the last two national elections. Voting continues to be largely along racial lines in South Africa, with blacks (perhaps 80 percent of the population) voting for the governing African National Congress (ANC) or the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). The DA has struggled to make itself relevant to the black majority, necessary if it is ever to become the party of government. Maimane’s selection as party leader had been part of that effort, building “one South Africa for all,” a slogan the party employed. But party leadership structures—and finances—appear to be largely white.  Some commentators attribute the fall in the DA’s performance—less than 1.5 percent—to a decline in conservative white support in the face of the DA’s leadership outreach to blacks or the incompetence of Maimane’s leadership; the Freedom Front Plus, an Afrikaaner party, arguably grew its support at the DA’s expense. However, the party had benefitted from the grotesque corruption and poor governance of the ANC’s Jacob Zuma, president from 2009 to 2018, enabling it to attract disgruntled ANC voters with its reputation for good governance. But by the 2019 elections, Zuma was gone, and Cyril Ramaphosa, with his reputation for competence, led the ANC. Hence, it is likely at least some voters who had defected to the DA returned to the ANC.  

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury has formally sanctioned on October 10 members of the Gupta family and associates, who are members of a “significant corruption network in South Africa.” Under the sanction, all Gupta property in the United States is blocked and must be reported to OFAC. All transactions by “U.S. persons” with the Guptas are blocked. In effect, the Guptas are barred from U.S. financial markets—presumably the aspect that will sting them the most. The sanctions are part of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2017. The Gupta brothers—Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh—moved from India to South Africa in 1993. They are credibly accused of massive corruption involving public funds and public office, and the family is now counted as among the richest in South Africa. Ajay is usually regarded as the leader. Their companies are centered on mining and media, and Oakbay Investments, a holding company, is their best known enterprise. They were closely associated with former South Africa President Jacob Zuma, himself now facing trial for corruption. Among other things, one of Zuma’s sons worked for the Guptas. The influence, even control, exercised by the Gupta family over Zuma’s administration was commonly described in South Africa as “state capture.” First under investigation and subsequently facing trial, the Gupta brothers have apparently fled South Africa for Dubai.  The flight of the Guptas and OFAC’s move against them probably strengthens the hand of South Africa's current president, Cyril Ramaphosa. Within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Ramaphosa is still fighting a rear guard action by Jacob Zuma and his allies as he seeks to implement anti-corruption and other economic reforms. Zuma has remained a powerful political figure, especially among the rural poor and among his fellow Zulus, who constitute approximately a quarter of South Africa’s population.  In a conference call that included reporters, Sigal Mandelker, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Treasury, acknowledge the role played by South African civil society in the struggle against corruption: “We commend the extraordinary work by South Africa’s civil society activists, investigative journalists, and whistleblowers who have exposed the breadth and depth of the Gupta family’s corruption.” Cooperation between the United States and South Africa against corruption may have a positive spillover to other aspects of the bilateral relationship, which has not been close.  

Rich people are everywhere, and they can have something to say about the level of economic development in their home countries. Afrasia Bank and New World Wealth have just published the 2019 Africa Wealth Report, which includes North Africa and African island states in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. It identifies the continent’s six wealthiest cities, defined as total individual private wealth—equities, real estate, businesses—less liabilities. They are Johannesburg, Cape Town, Cairo, Lagos, Durban, and Nairobi. Three of the six cities are in South Africa, which, notwithstanding the smaller island nations, is the continent’s most developed, with a highly diversified economy increasingly based on knowledge. Wealth in Lagos tends to be tied directly or indirectly to oil and financial services. Nairobi, for its part, is a major regional economic hub for east Africa. In the South African cites, rich people are concentrated in certain suburbs (Sandton for Johannesburg or Clifton and Bishopscourt for Cape Town, for example) rather than in the center; in Lagos, wealth is concentrated on Victoria Island and its extensions and Ikoyi; In Nairobi, Karin. The report finds that total wealth over the past decade has increased by 14 percent, but its growth has been held back by relatively weak economic performances in South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt. The report finds that there are twenty-three billionaires living in Africa. The report identifies Mauritius as having the highest per capita wealth, at $31,000, with South Africa second, at $11,500. In general, Africa is a continent of extreme inequality, which reduces the utility of average per capita wealth calculations. South Africa, despite its wealth, is ranked as the most unequal country in the world. About 42 percent of total wealth in Africa is held by 140,000 high net-worth individuals, defined as those with assets of at least $1 million. Even the richest of African cities are home to great numbers of people living in poverty. Lagos, the fourth wealthiest city in Africa, is also one of the poorest cities in the world in a country with the largest absolute number of people in poverty.  

Barbara Creecy, South Africa’s Minister of Environment, Forestry, and Fisheries, announced on World Rhino Day a substantial decline in the poaching of South Africa’s rhinos. From January to June 2019, 318 were poached, compared to 386 during the same period last year. South Africa has up to 80 percent of the global population of twenty thousand rhinoceroses. Organized criminal syndicates poach rhinos to meet the Asian demand for rhino horn, believed to be an aphrodisiac. (It’s not!) There is an international ban on the rhino horn trade. Creecy said the decline in rhino poaching reflected efforts to involve in conservation efforts those that live on the borders of parks in order to reduce their recruitment by such syndicates. She also cited tougher court prosecutions and new strategies, such as the use of sniffer dogs, to detect rhino horns. Creecy optimism is well-placed. The Ramaphosa administration understands the importance of tourism to the South African economy. Along with the political will, South Africa has the bureaucratic and technical strengths to confront international syndicates involved in the trade. Other countries may lack such capacity, and therefore must rely on more controversial methods to address poaching. Still, 318 poached rhinos is too high. In South Africa, as elsewhere, involving local people in conservation efforts is necessary to fighting poaching, as Creecy freely acknowledges.  

Ever since the days of the anti-apartheid struggle, the UN has been an important venue for South African diplomacy. In June 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa secured African Union-backing for South Africa for a two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is their third time holding a non-permanent “Africa” seat. At last year’s UN General Assembly (UNGA), Ramaphosa revealed a statue of Nelson Mandela prior to a peace summit in his name. But Ramaphosa announced that he will not be going to New York this year for UNGA. South Africa’s delegation will be led by the very-capable foreign minister, Naledi Pandor. This is a surprise. In a must-read piece, John Stremlau explains why Ramaphosa is not going, and why his decision is wise politically. Instead of attending UNGA, Ramaphosa says that he will focus on the crises currently facing the country. He will work on implementing measures against gender-based violence and public violence, the latter of which almost certainly refers to the xenophobic attacks on foreigners. He also said he would be taking initiatives to turn around the economy. Among Americans who follow South Africa, the xenophobia and economic woes are familiar; perhaps less so is the extraordinary amount of gender-based violence that crosses racial and class lines. Illustrating its magnitude, South Africa police report that a woman is murdered every three hours, while the World Health Organization finds that South Africa ranks fourth out of 183 countries in “femicide,” the murder of women and girls because of their gender. Stremlau calls attention to a New Yorker article by Cape-Town-based Rosa Lyster that is a detailed survey of South African gender-based violence. Lyster shows that the grisly rape and murder of a nineteen-year-old girl at a post office in Cape Town has politically ignited the issue of gender-based violence, with certain similarities to the #MeToo movement in the United States.  On September 18, Ramaphosa addressed a joint sitting of the National Assembly (lower house) and the Council of Provinces (upper house) to respond to gender-based violence. With respect to repairing relations with African countries in the aftermath of the xenophobic riots, he has sent special envoys to seven African states. As for turning the economy around, Stremlau points out that addressing violence—both xenophobic and gender-based—could give Ramaphosa more time to address poverty, unemployment, and inequality. Particularly useful is Stremlau’s positioning of Ramaphosa’s response to gender-based violence in the context of the governing African National Congress (ANC). The ANC has advocated gender equality ever since the anti-apartheid struggle. It is party policy to achieve gender parity in all party structures. Stremlau points out that Ramaphosa has been widely praised for achieving gender balance in his cabinet. Stremlau also points out that this is smart politics: some two-thirds of women vote for the ANC. According to Stremlau, Ramaphosa is right not to go to New York, and sometimes doing the right thing is also politically wise.

Mob attacks on foreign-owned shops in Johannesburg have damaged relations between South Africa and Nigeria. The Nigerian government has announced that it is evacuating some four hundred Nigerians from South Africa. The violence is being characterized as “xenophobic,” which, by all accounts, it is. But the story is more complicated, and aspects of it have roots in apartheid South Africa and the dislocations resulting from too-rapid urbanization. According to the Washington Post, the mobs comprise mostly single, black men who have recently arrived in Johannesburg from the countryside looking for work. Many of them live in apartheid-era hostels, squalid shelters for workers away from home long known as breeding grounds for ethnic violence. Work in Johannesburg is hard to find. Unemployment is over 50 percent for those under thirty-five, while among the entire working-age population it is almost 30 percent. In terms of education and training, many or most of the newly-arrived are ill-equipped to enter the modern economy. Elite educational institutions have become racially integrated, but they serve a tiny proportion of the population. The quality of primary education available to the poor, especially in rural areas, has not advanced much since the days of “Bantu” education in the apartheid era. Again reflecting apartheid strictures on black self-employment, the informal sector of South Africa’s economy is smaller than, say, in Nigeria. In Lagos, a far poorer and less developed city than Johannesburg, everybody has a hustle. Begging among southern Nigerians is rare; those that beg are usually from elsewhere in Nigeria or West Africa. The popular culture is highly entrepreneurial. Hence, when Nigerians emigrate, and millions do to all over the world, the often set up small enterprises, creating wealth, but also engendering envy. The Johannesburg mobs are attacking “foreigners,” who are probably disproportionately Nigerians and Somalis—known for being similarly entrepreneurial—because they are seen as taking away jobs from local people. That appears to rarely be the case; if anything, foreigners may well be creating jobs. A final factor to consider is that, all over Africa, urbanization is proceeding rapidly—probably too rapidly. South Africa is now said to be 60 percent urban and over half of Nigerians live in cities. In Nigeria, investment in urban infrastructure, ranging from clean water to roads to schools, has not remotely reached the level needed to accommodate the urban influx. There has been more such investment in Johannesburg and South Africa in general, reflecting (among other things) that South Africa is a much richer, more developed country than Nigeria. Hence its attraction to economic immigrants. Nevertheless, the investment shortfall in Johannesburg is there for all to see. It is particularly acute in education. Unemployed male youth would appear to be drivers of Johannesburg crime and violence, in part because there is no place for them.  What to do? Reversing urbanization is not really a possibility. Infrastructure investment takes time and money. South Africans are conflicted over education reform; everybody agrees it is necessary, but there is no consensus about how to do it. So addressing the roots of mob violence will take time. For now, the Ramaphosa government appears correctly to be dealing with mob violence as a law-and-order issue.

Tyler McBrien is an associate editor for education at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. On August 21, South Africa’s Equality Court ruled that gratuitous displays of the Apartheid-era flag counted as hate speech and discrimination. Confronting history head on, Judge Phineas Mojapelo wrote in his ruling that the flag represents “a vivid symbol of white supremacy and black disenfranchisement and suppression,” and flying it, “besides being racist and discriminatory, demonstrates a clear intention to be hurtful.”  The court ruled in favor of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, who argued that the Old Flag, as some call it, has long become a global symbol of “white supremacy, exclusion, and hatred.” Ultimately, the ruling is not an outright ban, but rather expressly prohibits “gratuitous” displays. This interpretation leaves room for the use of the flag for artistic, academic, or journalistic purposes, similar to the German law banning Nazi and other hate symbols outside the context of "art or science, research or teaching.”    Many in the country welcomed the Equality Court ruling, and members of opposition political party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) encouraged the government not to stop at the flag. EFF leader Julius Malema has urged the government to go even further in its banishment of apartheid-era symbols and to remove the Afrikaans portion, known as Die Stem, from South Africa’s national anthem. But not everyone was happy. On the opposing side, self-described Afrikaner rights group AfriForum maintained that the flag restrictions curtail free speech, even though the group applauded a similar ruling in 2011, when the court deemed the anti-apartheid struggle song “Shoot the Boer” as hate speech (the group claimed that “boer” in this case referred to white farmers, and defenders of the song asserted that “boer” represented the system of apartheid as a whole). Nonetheless, AfriForum plans to contest the judgment. In fact, just hours after the ruling, AfriForum’s deputy chief Ernst Roets tweeted an image of the now-banned apartheid flag with the question, “Did I just commit hate speech?” In response, the Nelson Mandela Foundation promised to file an urgent request to hold Roets in contempt of court.  The recent lawsuit and subsequent fallout represent just one episode in the country’s ongoing reckoning with its apartheid past, a process that has picked up steam over the past few years. Amidst the greater context of decolonization, a social movement called Rhodes Must Fall erupted at the University of Cape Town in 2015 over a statue commemorating Cecil Rhodes, whom many see as a symbol of white supremacy. More recently, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has made land reform a priority, to address inequality in land ownership, which many see as the economic legacy of apartheid.  These developments offer a stark reminder that even South Africa, a model of reconciliation to many, remains divided and deeply unequal. Twenty-five years of political freedom has not translated into economic freedom for most in the country, which the World Bank considers the most unequal in the world. Though the flag ruling represented a powerful symbolic victory over the apartheid past, material and economic victories are proving much more elusive in a country where the white minority owns almost three quarters of all farmland. For South Africa, William Faulkner’s words ring true. The apartheid past is never dead, it’s not even past.

In his June 20 state of the nation address to parliament, President Cyril Ramaphosa laid out a short-term approach to land reform, including a call for the expropriation of privately owned land without compensation for distribution. Ramaphosa said his Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture has completed a report that will shape his administration’s land reform program. The report will soon be sent to the cabinet. In the meantime, he said the state would continue to identify public land that would be suitable for distribution to urban dwellers and farmers. The Land Bank will support black commercial farmers with an allocation of R3.9 billion (272.8 million USD). Characteristically, Ramaphosa emphasized an orderly process (the report by the Advisory Panel) and addressed immediate needs (identifying public land suitable for redistribution and support for black commercial farmers who often lack access to capital). This section of his speech avoided emphasis on expropriation without compensation of privately owned land, a lethal third rail for the overseas and domestic investors Ramaphosa seeks to attract to jump-start the South African economy. Ramaphosa has also appointed the highly regarded Thoko Didiza as Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (the lead implementing agency). Didiza enjoys widespread support, including the white farming sector represented by AgricSA in addition to the NGO activists advocating for the expropriation process, such as the Institute for Poverty, Land, and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape. Especially in foreign media, the land reform issue is too often oversimplified into competing morality plays. On the one hand, some see land reform as taking land stolen from blacks by whites under apartheid and distributing the land back to the poor blacks without providing compensation. A competing narrative sees expropriation without compensation as a violation of constitutionally guaranteed property rights and making a travesty of the country’s vaunted rule of law. Media outside of South Africa often sees the current debate as somehow a rerun of Zimbabwe, where white farmers were driven off their land through violence with no pretense to the rule of law. There is a broad consensus in South Africa about the need for land reform and a recognition of the complexity of the issue. For example, tribal trust lands are controlled by chiefs and farmers and normally have no security of tenure. The increased demand for land for housing plots that has resulted in rapid urbanization is a problem more greatly experienced in urban areas rather than in the countryside. In juxtaposition to the constitutional argument against expropriation of privately owned land, publicly owned land could be redistributed without any infringement on private property rights. South Africa’s friends will be eagerly awaiting the publication of the report by the Advisory Panel on Land Reform and how it addresses these multiple issues.  

Nigeria and South Africa have been the two African countries of greatest strategic importance to the United States. They are the two largest economies on the continent, and a major venue for U.S. investment. Historically, the United States and Nigeria have cooperated on African issues of mutual concern. Nigeria is on the front lines of the jihadist insurgency Boko Haram that spills over into other countries of the region. South Africa’s is the most sophisticated and developed of Africa’s economies. Political cooperation, however, is less developed than with Nigeria. Nevertheless, South Africa’s new foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, is expected to pursue closer dialogue with the United States and other western countries than her immediate predecessors. South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa is actively seeking greater U.S. trade and investment. Reflecting their importance, the United States maintains large embassies in both countries, and in both there is a significant interagency presence reflecting the broad range of U.S. interests. In Nigeria, the Trump administration has announced its intention to appoint a career diplomat, Mary Beth Leonard, as ambassador. She will succeed current Ambassador Stuart Symington, another career diplomat, when his tour of duty ends. Mary Beth Leonard has had numerous African assignments and served as the U.S. ambassador to Mali from 2011 to 2014 during the coup d'état that overthrew then President Amadou Toumani Toure. As is the case with Ambassador Leonard, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria nearly always comes from the career foreign service. In South Africa, the U.S. ambassador is usually a political appointee rather than a career diplomat. The most recent ambassador, Patrick Gaspard, held senior positions in the Democratic Party and the administration of President Barack Obama before being named ambassador to South Africa in 2013. His mission ended in December 2016 (Ambassadorial assignments are normally for three years). Since then, there has been no U.S. ambassador to South Africa; the U.S. mission has been headed by a charge d’affaires. In November 2018, the Trump administration announced its intention to nominate Lana Marks as ambassador to South Africa. She is South African-born, a highly successful designer and manufacturer of high-end handbags. She is a member of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. As of now, Lana Marks has yet to have her Senate hearing. Speculation as to why the confirmation process is taking so long ranges from the complexity of her business affairs to the Trump administration’s focus on judicial appointments. Such speculation is just that—speculation. Nevertheless, the fact remains that for nearly three years, there has been no U.S. ambassador in South Africa. South Africa will occupy one of the non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council this coming January. It can be anticipated that South Africa will be more active diplomatically than in the immediate past. Under those circumstances, having a U.S. ambassador in Pretoria would appear to be a matter of urgency.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering May 30 to June 6, was compiled by Mallory Matheson and Rebecca Turkington.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of Naledi Pandor as minister of international relations may be a positive step toward improving South Africa’s relations with the United States. Pandor is part of a Ramaphosa’s trimmed-down cabinet whose positions are split equally between men and women.  The bilateral relationship between the United States and South Africa has been correct but hardly special and even at times frosty. It soured under former President Jacob Zuma, who was hostile to the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya and had been drawn in Russia’s orbit with a now-defunct nuclear deal. South Africa’s foreign policy is fiercely independent, but has tended to avoid confronting authoritarian regimes in its neighborhood, particularly those of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Joseph Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo, much to the chagrin of the United States.  Naledi Pandor comes from the “struggle establishment.” Her grandfather, Z.K. Matthews, and father, Joe Matthews, were icons of the anti-apartheid movement. In her early years, Pandor was educated in Botswana. While there, she met her future husband, a Muslim, and converted to Islam. After receiving a bachelor’s in history and English from the University of Botswana, she received a master’s from the University of London and from Stellenbosch University. She has also lectured at the University of Botswana and the University of Cape Town. In April 2019, she received her doctorate in higher education from the University of Pretoria.  For the past decade she has been in the cabinet. As a minister she developed a reputation for competence with demanding portfolios: higher education (2009–2012, 2018–2019); home affairs (2012–2014); and science and technology (2014–2018). Pandor is a close ally of Ramaphosa in the internecine struggles within the governing African National Congress. She was Ramaphosa’s choice to be deputy president, but she did not win sufficient party support. With her multi-cultural background, strong academic credentials, and extensive ministerial experience, it can be anticipated that she will engage with other governments more productively than her predecessors. Embassies in Pretoria have welcomed her appointment. She is the fourth woman in a row to hold the position. She is likely to return to the Mandela tradition of emphasizing human rights in South Africa’s foreign policy. Her immediate predecessor, Lindiwe Sisulu, held the position for only a year, perhaps as a place-holder before the 2019 elections; Sisulu is now the minister for human settlements, water, and sanitation. But, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane was in the office for a decade (2009-2018), as was her immediate predecessor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, (1999–2009). Mashabane’s tenure as foreign minister coincided with the now-discredited administration of Jacob Zuma, while Dlamini-Zuma’s with that of Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, for which she was criticized for her inaction during land invasions and farm murders in Zimbabwe. Many western diplomats found Mashabane a difficult interlocutor, while Pandor has a much more positive reputation.  The next two years will be significant for South African foreign policy. It occupies an Africa seat on the UN Security Council for the 2019–2020 term and it will take over the chair of the African Union from Egypt in 2020. Pandor has the experience and talent to turn the relationship around, but the Trump administration will need to reciprocate if she reaches out.

This is a guest blog post by Anthony Carroll. Anthony is founding director of Acorus Capital, a private equity fund investing in Africa, and a vice president of Manchester Trade Limited, an international business advisory firm. He has over forty years of experience working with Africa and is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on national television the selection of South Africa’s new cabinet. This announcement quickly followed his inauguration to become president after Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) secured 57.5 percent of the vote in the national elections of May 8, the fifth since the end of Apartheid in 1994. Since the elections there had been much speculation as to the size and content of President Ramaphosa’s cabinet. During his predecessor Jacob Zuma’s presidency, cabinet members were often chosen on the basis of their closeness to Zuma and were his praise singers within the ANC. Also, with thirty-six departments, each with a minister and deputy ministers, there was jurisdictional overlap which detracted attention from substantive tasks and the departments often served as their own magnets for corruption. In order to create more coherence, President Ramaphosa reduced the number of cabinet ministers to twenty-eight. The selection process was a delicate one involving ANC party leadership and Ramaphosa’s executive team, with certain concessions having to be made to the ANC’s old guard, including some Zuma acolytes. However, Ramaphosa’s choices were largely merit-based, broadly representative (50 percent are women) and in harmony with his “New Dawn” initiative of expanding economic opportunity for all South Africans through economic growth rather than redistribution. This is a cabinet in his own likeness and being! It should be noted that the cabinet of President Mbeki also was filled with competent executives who were able to achieve the highest economic growth rates and job creation in the past twenty-five years. The Zuma presidency was a costly detour. Although there was no surprise to see the names of such competent officials as Pravin Gordhan, Ephraim Patel, Naledi Pandor, Lindiwe Sisulu, and Tito Mboweni, Ramaphosa’s selection of Patricia de Lille as minister of public works and enterprises really “put the cat among the pigeons.” De Lille won high marks as an anti-apartheid activist in the Western Cape as a leader of the strident Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). She later departed the PAC and formed the Independent Democrats and eventually merged that into the Democratic Alliance. She was elected mayor of Cape Town in 2011 where she gained high marks for her courage and executive leadership. She was a tireless critic of President Mbeki’s HIV/AIDS denialism and the massive corruption of the Zuma presidency. Despite being the most popular politician in the Western Cape, she was pummeled by DA leadership over allegations of favoritism and inflexibility. After a long but successful battle to clear her name, last year she resigned as mayor, quit the DA party and formed GOOD, a new political party that received 3 percent of the Western Cape provincial vote in the May elections.  De Lille’s selection has many promising aspects. First, she is fearless and has little tolerance for incompetence or corruption. Second, she has executive experience that she will bring to bear in addressing the acute needs for infrastructure development in South Africa. These needs include modernizing ports, airports, roads, and rails to improve South Africa’s ability to grow its economy and in so doing deftly navigate the pitfalls inherent in the country’s federal system. She can also address the woeful status of local and provincial governments to provide the most basic of infrastructure for its citizenry. For example, she could tackle the problem of housing shortages in South Africa’s burgeoning cities and in so doing ameliorate some of the polemics around land redistribution, the “Third Rail” of South African politics.  Last, her appointment provides an opportunity for the U.S. to pivot and develop a more coherent and fulsome political and economic relationship with South Africa. The passage of the BUILD Act will see the creation of a new development finance agency by the US government with $60 billion to finance projects that benefit both the U.S. and South African private sectors. Indeed, South Africa’s sophisticated banking and financial services institutions could provide a solid basis to explore opportunities for financial leveraging that could create mutual benefits. Let’s get the ball rolling.

At a rugby stadium in Pretoria on May 25, Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in as South Africa’s fourth democratically elected president since 1994. Citing government austerity measures and perhaps as a sign of the administration’s new dispensation, Ramaphosa’s inauguration will cost about half as much as the 2014 ceremony to swear in Jacob Zuma.  The U.S. presidential delegation to the inauguration was headed by Kimberly A. Reed, the president of the Export-Import Bank. The other members of the delegation included Bonnie Glick, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew Olmem, deputy assistant to the president for economic policy, Jessica Lapenn, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Pretoria, and Cyril Sartor, the senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council.  More than two years into the Trump administration, there is still no U.S. ambassador to South Africa. Hence, the embassy is headed by a charge. According to the White House statement, no member of Congress was included in the delegation, nor were any business people. In the past, the presidential delegation to South African inaugurations have included prominent figures, such as First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1994 and Attorney General Janet Reno in 1999, though no delegation was sent to the discredited Jacob Zuma’s inauguration in 2014.  But this year’s presidential delegation was workman-like. All of its members would be directly involved in building the U.S.-South Africa bilateral relationship. There also may have been a trade and investment tilt to the delegation. If so, that would be appropriate. Attracting foreign investments had been one of Ramaphosa’s principal goals since he became president in early 2018. Even if the political and security dimensions of the bilateral relationship over the past decade have been frosty, the economic relationship has continued to develop. 

Under the leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa, the African National Congress (ANC) improved its performance in the 2019 national elections. The ANC won about 58 percent of the vote, up from 54 percent in the local government elections of 2016, though still a decline from the 62 percent in won in 2014 national elections. It lost seats, but it seems to have, for now, arrested the Zuma-era decline.  By the beginning of 2018, the ANC had removed from office the scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma as ANC party leader and president. The party then elected Ramaphosa, who had orchestrated Zuma’s departure, as its leader and as South Africa’s president. He launched a reform program, “New Dawn,” that promised the renewal of the party, an emphasis on party unity, an end to corruption, and national economic policy designed to address the poverty of the black majority through accelerated economic growth. “New Dawn” was the ANC’s campaign theme in the national elections, though Ramaphosa faced push-back from the still powerful party forces aligned with Zuma. In democratic South Africa, elections matter, and Ramaphosa’s success has consequences. It has led to a realignment within the party in Ramaphosa’s favor. A party instrument, the Integrity Commission (IC), is charged with vetting candidates on the ANC’s electoral lists as to their moral and overall suitability for office. Frequently criticized as “toothless,” nevertheless the IC has accused Deputy President David Mabuza and others associated with Zuma as having “prejudiced the integrity of the ANC.” Accordingly, Mabuza and others so accused have declined to be sworn-in as MP’s until they are able to answer the accusations. Observers had expected that Ramaphosa would reappoint Mabuza as deputy president for the sake of party unity and also following the adage of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” He could still do so—the president may appoint up to two ministers, including the deputy president, from outside parliament—though he is more likely to take the opportunity to appoint a different personality less compromised by allegations of corruption. One possibility is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who narrowly lost a vote for party leader after Zuma, her ex-husband, was pushed out. While she is usually counted in the Zuma camp, she is a formidable politician in her own right, and the ANC emphasizes the importance of gender equality. For Ramaphosa, as deputy president she, too, would fit the adage of “keep your enemies closer.”  The bottom line of this political maneuvering is that Ramaphosa’s hand within the party has been strengthened by the election results, granting him greater freedom to pursue his agenda. We can expect him to continue to renew the ANC and begin to address South Africa’s social and economic problems that were exacerbated by the disastrous nine-year tenure of Jacob Zuma. The Zuma faction is still formidable, but for friends of South Africa, this is good news.