Mutual Benefits

As Galileo established in science and the Impressionists demonstrated for art, how one sees the world depends on the lens through which it is viewed. This insight is critical to comprehending the basis for a successful relationship between Americans and South Africans. The fascination which the South African story holds for Americans is easily understood. Seen through the lens of American civil rights history, apartheid in South Africa seemed like legalized racism. The white right with its military garb and threats of violence in pursuit of its goal of a “volkstaat,” an Afrikaner white state, were the soldiers of bigotry, ready to win their version of civil war. Alternatively, tapping into a different myth, the Zulus of the Inkatha Freedom Party led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, an “authentic” figure lionized by American intellectuals and conservatives in the 1980s, appeared to be a uniquely African creation.

Unfamiliar with the demographics and political leanings of South Africans, including millions of Zulus who contradicted their “tribal” affiliation and supported the African National Congress, Americans saw the increasingly hostile IFP/ANC confrontation as a story of primitive conflict like those depicted in Tarzan movies. None of these cartoonish characterizations was appropriate, and rarely were the images transmitted from South Africa via popular media sufficiently nuanced to explicate the story as the South Africans might tell it. Thus, the surprise at the peaceful election outcome so different from what was expected based on the stereotypical American views of the actors. But once the lens is adjusted, it is apparent that the American creation of a race-based paradigm in which whites and blacks are polar opposites is part of what was exploded by South Africans in their April elections.

Surprising everyone but themselves, white and black South Africans defied “conventional wisdom” and stood together, legally equal for the first time, waiting patiently to change their lives. For white South Africans it was a change which relieved them of a heavy burden of guilt and freed them from the sense of shame constantly reinforced by their country’s status as moral pariah. For black South Africans, the overwhelming majority, the change represented universal acknowledgement of the reality which had sustained them for so long during the dark apartheid era. It was public affirmation of their private knowledge that the country belonged to them and that the force of history would guarantee the eventual restoration of their rights, notwithstanding the efforts by a frightened, determined minority to alter the certain outcome. Thus, in place of the bitterness and alienation, recrimination and animosity, found in horrific circumstances elsewhere such as Bosnia and Rwanda, in South Africa there is a sense of relief and a confident commitment to a shared future. It is imperative for the flourishing of the American-South African relationship that Americans transcend the limitations of an inapt approach to the relationship from a position of knowing superiority, based on employing the wrong lens.  While Americans may serve for some period as the senior partner in the relationship, it will have an assertive, rambunctious junior partner, eager to assume an ever more significant role. And, always pursuing an independent path, proud South Africans will gladly accept the advice and expertise proffered by their American friends, for whom they have the deepest respect, but will make up their own minds about how to solve their problems. This is the prerogative they have the right to exercise as citizens of a sovereign state, and as democratic equals.

This notion is reflected in the words of South African deputy president Thabo Mbeki in addressing the trade relationship at a conference on investment in South Africa, sponsored by the United States Information Agency in Atlanta, Georgia in June: “We are looking forward to a relationship with the United States, a relationship of equals – a relationship defined by negotiated agreements such that both sides find that what comes of those agreements is mutually beneficial.” These words are as valid for the relationship between each nation’s people. With a non-distorting lens in place, those seeking business and investment opportunities in South Africa will understand that they must bring as much to the table as they seek to take away.

And that the resources must have relevance and lasting value for the South Africans, from whom Americans may learn lessons about how those resources may be applied to the benefit of all.

South Africa, The Journal of Trade, Industry and Investment
Publisher, David Altman
Writer, Gail M. Leftwich