Business Day columnist Peter Bruce this week called South Africa’s foreign policy mindlessly anti-Western and totally out of control. I couldn’t disagree more.
What Bruce would have us do is to capitulate to the blackmail of the US - all in the name of national interest. The US expects us to toe their foreign policy line or else it will cut foreign aid, and we won’t be exempt from new US duties on steel and aluminium.
What nonsense. Since when does South Africa need to be forced into submission because Big Brother says it must or else? Does Bruce really expect us to once again become a lackey of the West, abandoning all our progressive foreign policy positions that have been defended so bravely for almost a quarter of a century?
Let me remind Bruce that the cornerstone of South Africa’s foreign policy is our domestic national interest and that of the African continent. The approach of the ANC has always been guided by Nelson Mandela’s pronouncement in 1994 that “human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs”.
And yes, there are times that the leadership has taken positions that don’t quite resonate with that mantra, particularly when it came to issues such as human rights abuses in Sudan and Burundi, but President Cyril Ramaphosa and Minister for International Relations Lindiwe Sisulu are more than prepared to help restore South Africa’s moral high ground.
The last thing we want to do is to align our foreign policy positions with those of the US - a country that has yet to close Guantanamo Bay military prison, which has a president who believes torture is a good thing, and is now dispensing aid dollars only if American interests can be served - certainly not for the greater good.
That is not to mention its long and continuing history of regime change efforts where foreign governments are deemed unpalatable and too independent.
So, let the US deny us an exemption on new duties on steel and aluminium as part of its collective punishment for us being one of the 10 countries least likely to vote with the US at the UN. It is problematic in that it could cost us 7500 jobs, but then we should become less reliant on right-wing bullies and lean more on our friends - be they China, India, Latin America or Europe.
At the end of the day their trade, investment and financial support may count for much more that the $459.7million that the US waves as a red flag in our faces as their ultimate source of blackmail.
Most of the US foreign aid money goes to health services, basic education and assistance for small and medium enterprises. China says it is in a position to provide even more financial support to South Africa than it is already giving. Such assistance could ultimately replace US aid contributions, and would be without any strings attached.
But as any former colony will attest, we need to develop the capacity to stand on our own feet and become less reliant on foreign aid. Were we to curb unnecessary spending on the cabinet, for example, imagine how much money would be saved.
If you think the R870000 spent on paying for Minister Malusi Gigaba’s wife to accompany him on foreign trips during the course of a year is exorbitant, then consider how much the government is spending on the rest of the ministers' spouses.
The spouse of every minister and deputy minister gets to travel the world in first class and is given a daily per diem. For the record, when I was the spouse of a deputy minister I travelled in first class only once, which was enough of a burden on my conscience.
We are sitting with one of the most bloated cabinets in the world, with 60 ministers. If each minister and deputy minister travelled regularly with their spouse as Gigaba is doing, that would come to over R52million a year.
In Canada, which has the highest living standard in the world, the government doesn’t pay for ministers' spouses to travel on official trips.
According to some estimates, if our executive was cut down to 15 ministries, the government would save R4.7billion a year.
If maintaining our independent foreign policy means we lose US aid, then so be it. We have the capacity to manage without handouts if we trim the excesses.
To those that criticise our foreign policy independence as being unreasonable, our voting pattern in the UN is notably similar to the rest of the southern African region. South Africa’s voting coincidence with the US on UN resolutions is 18%, in keeping with the regional trend: Mozambique is 19%, Namibia 21%, Botswana 23%, Angola 19% and Zimbabwe 14%.
* Ebrahim is Group Foreign Editor