President Cyril Ramaphosa goes to the US in the next few weeks to address the United Nations General Assembly. But will his trade negotiators currently in Washington have made enough progress by then to allow Ramaphosa to fly from New York to Washington to sign a trade deal that significantly reduces the crippling 30% tariffs US President Donald Trump has imposed on imports from South Africa? Former South African newspaper editor Phillip van Niekerk, now living in Washington, thinks a deal may be on the cards. “But, you know, South Africa has really dropped the ball (diplomatically in the US) And this goes back a long way. This doesn't, doesn't start with the Trump administration. It doesn't start now, in 2025. There's deep relationships between South Africa and the United States that back a long, long way.,” Van Niekerk tell Peter Bruce in this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge.
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Jumping Jack Flash just wants gas gas gas
“I do not see imported liquified natural gas as a long-term solution for South Africa or even a base power solution. I see it as a, as a peaking and a balancing solution,” energy analysts Chris Yelland tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. But gas is all the rage. Minerals minister Gwede Mantashe wants to spend a fortune building new infrastructure and South Africa has built its urgent new trade proposals with Donald Trump around a huge new standing order for imported LNG. "Gas base supply is an option for South Africa. Base supply becomes an option when you've got significant indigenous gas resources where you drill a hole in the ground and natural gas comes out. You don't have to drill a hole in a foreign country, take out the gas, turn it into a liquid, transport it thousands of kilometres across the sea, convert it back into a gas, compress it, and pipe it to where it's needed.”
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People, we’re tired
South African researcher, author and analyst Prof Richard Calland tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge “ are fatigued by a weak government, by extremely precarious socioeconomic conditions and by a sense of going backwards of not making progress. But it's easy to criticise our president. It's easy to say he's not ruthless enough, not decisive enough, not strategic enough but we have to maintain a sense of perspective and balance in our commentary.” And the voters and upcoming elections? “The ANC appears now to be in terminal decline, and I've long held the view that once the breach was broken and the a ANC lost its majority, that it might well enter a free fall period [and] I think we're in that. And of course once Ramaphosa goes and, and he's the last of that generation of serious politicians, then you are in a sense, you're dropping down a division.”
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Shooting the Messenger
The DA’s spokesperson on foreign affairs, Emma Powell, found herself at the wrong end of a powerful assault by the State last week after she notified the country that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Special Envoy to the US (and, subsequently, to North America), Mcebisi Jonas, had done little or no work trying to heal our battered relationship with the Donald Trump White House in the 90 plus days since he was appointed. In fact, the Americans wanted nothing to do with him and had declined his request for a diplomatic visa. The National Security Council, which reports directly to Ramaphosa alerted The Sowetan to a report it has done on Powell and accused her of running the country down during a trip to the US in February. The newspaper splashed the story as the Presidency put out a statement calling her part of “a right wing nexus” acting against South Africa’s interests abroad. Powell tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that this is nonsense. "It's an empirical fact that the ANC had done nothing of value or meaning in order to shore up and rebuild trust with the United States in order to safeguard South Africa's interests in regards to our continued inclusion in Agoa beyond September,” she says. “We were trying to do our part and waving South Africa’s flag”.
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"The Americans Really Want to Trade With Us"
As US President Donald Trump sends final notice to the South African government that he will impose a 30% tariff on its exports to the US on August 1, an Afrikaner delegation to the US, fronted by Freedom Front Plus leader Corne Mulder, has returned with a short list of points it says were given to them by senior White House officials when they met last week. "They really want to trade with us,” Mulder tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. "But the Trump administration feels very strongly about these political hurdles that need to get out of the way.” The four principles — that the ANC denounce the singing of Kill the Boer, that all expropriation of property is fairly compensated, that all US investment into South Africa be free of BEE regulations and that farm attacks be classified as a priority crime — are, for the most part, almost impossible to comply with. But then again President Cyril Ramaphosa has nothing substantial on the table which which to beat back the Trump tariff assault. Still, he has wriggled his way out of tougher puzzles than the one the Afrikaners returned from Washington with. Would he consider even trying?
Peter Bruce, veteran South African newspaper editor and commentator, interviews the country's social and political leaders and experts in a weekly effort to explain what is actually going on in this complicated country. Bruce's interviews are about making events easy to understand for people with little time to listen.
South Africa