South Africa is preparing to “put the megaphone away” when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anticipating that President-elect Donald Trump might not look kindly on that country’s anti-Western foreign policy stances.
The new South African ambassador to the U.S., Ebrahim Rasool, told South Africa’s Daily Maverick that the country had to consider its trade interests and therefore had to scale back some of its rhetoric on issues like the war in Gaza.
The Daily Maverick reported earlier this month:
In an interview with Daily Maverick, Rasool said he was very aware that being SA ambassador to the US would be much more difficult this time round with a president who is “probably populism perfected. So I’m not going there thinking of business as usual… I understand the need to completely recalibrate.”
That required the government to rebalance its values with its interests in foreign policy.
While South Africa would continue its case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of “genocide,” Rasool said, there was a need to bear the possible consequences in mind:
“[W]e have taken it to the point in which others are accusing us of overreaching. And therefore we will stick by the case, but let us now trust our legal team, trust the evidence that we have placed in front of the judges of the ICJ, trust the judges of the ICJ to come to a sustainable, just solution – but that we need to put away the megaphone now.”
As Breitbart News has noted, South Africa is seeking a renewal of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), under which it is among a group of African countries that enjoy privileged access to U.S. markets. But its foreign policy stances — including support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, and backing for various African tyrants — have often clashed with American interests and values. Both Democrats and Republicans have suggested that AGOA could be in trouble the next time it comes up for renewal before the end of the 2025 fiscal year in September next year.
Rasool said that he would seek to convince Trump, and Americans, that AGOA is in their interests. He said that South Africa preferred the U.S. to China as a trade partner, and that there was potential common ground with Trump in that South Africa, too, opposed war in general — whether in Eastern Europe or in the Middle East.
“[Y]ou must speak into not against … the American self-imagination and the imagination of a Donald Trump,” Rasool explained.
He added that he hoped that entrepreneur Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa, would convince Trump of the need for trade with South Africa, which is a source for many rare and precious minerals that are necessary for a variety of applications in space and technology in general.
Rasool was the ambassador for several years during the presidency of Barack Obama, in a very different political environment. He is also the former premier of the Western Cape province, where Cape Town is located. While he is seen as one of the moderate voices within the African National Congress, which has governed South Africa for 30 years, he has often sided with extremists in his party on the Middle East, pushing an anti-Israel agenda.
The fact that he is at least publicly open to softening his country’s stance is a sign of Trump’s influence on foreign policy, which is already being felt several weeks before he takes office on January 20.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file
