Outspoken political analyst and published author Prince Mashele believes there could not have been a worse candidate than former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas for a special envoy to the US amid fractured relations with Pretoria.
This week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that Jonas would be sent to the world’s most powerful nation as his and South Africa’s official representative.
“In this capacity, Mr Jonas is entrusted with the responsibility to advance South Africa’s diplomatic, trade and bilateral priorities. He will lead negotiations, foster strategic partnerships and engage with US government officials and private sector leaders to promote our nation’s interests,” said Ramaphosa.
However, Mashele believes the decision was a total miscalculation and is bound to backfire spectacularly.
Mashele argues that Jonas is compromised, first because of his other hat as chairman of the MTN board, given the company’s dealings with Iran – one of the US’s enemies.
Second, charged Mashele, the fact that Jonas has publicly condemned US President Donald Trump was another “red flag” that makes him a bad choice and will most likely be shunned after Ebrahim Rasool was expelled as SA ambassador to Washington for the same sin.
Relations between the US and South Africa have soured over the past few months, probably reaching the lowest point since 1994.
Jonas is likely to make the situation worse, Mashele argued.
“We all know that the relations between South Africa and America have been damaged, and Trump has made it clear and even wrote an executive order detailing the sins that he thinks South Africa has committed,” said Mashele during a conversation with Sunday World Engage.
“Sin number one is that South Africa is cosying up with America’s enemies, and he mentions specifically Iran. Now Cyril Ramaphosa, presumably, wants to repair the relations between the US and South Africa. Who does he appoint to become an envoy? He appoints Mcebisi Jonas, who is the chairman of MTN, a company that has done things with Iran.”
In his executive order signed on February 7, Trump stated that the US is pulling funding and any support to SA because, among other things, “South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, by among others, accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.”
Mashele insists that this disqualifies Jonas and can almost certainly guarantee that he will be treated with hostility because of MTN’s links with Iran.
“The Americans, by the way, know everything that MTN has done in Iran. They have the best intelligence in the world, they know. I will be shocked by the way if the Americans even give Mcebisi Jonas a visa to go to America,” said Mashele.
“Also, why did Trump expel Rasool? It is because he insulted Trump. Did Mcebisi Jonas insult Trump or not? He did. So then, why do you expect Trump to treat Mcebisi Jonas differently from Rassool? It must be an incompetent president who takes decisions like that.”
Mashele says that from the Jonas’ appointment alone, he can almost tell with certainty that whoever gets to replace Rasool will also be a misfit.
South Africa’s foreign policy was in sixes and sevens, he added, and at the current rate it is not likely to improve anytime soon.
If Mashele were in Ramaphosa’s shoes, given the hostilities between Pretoria and Washington, he would choose an apolitical person to be South Africa’s special envoy and ultimately ambassador to the US.
“The fact that Cyril Ramaphosa chose Mcebisi Jonas as an envoy shows you that Cyril Ramaphosa does not get what is going on. Whoever he is going to appoint as ambassador ultimately will be someone who is not going to repair the relations between the USA and South Africa,” he said.
“If that was not where he was going, he would not appoint Mcebisi Jonas. I would have appointed someone who is non-political with no political history, someone who is neutral. I would have found a retired businessman who has done some business in the US and who knows the US very well.
“This person is non-political but has been successful as a businessperson.
“If you do that, you would play with the psychology of Donald Trump, who sees himself as a successful businessman. But Cyril Ramaphosa does not think, and neither do those around him. That is why they appointed Mcebisi Jonas, who is muddying the waters and making the situation worse.
“If you were to follow the logic behind [the] Mcebisi Jonas’s [appointment], we can already foretell that whoever Cyril appoints as our ambassador to the US will mess up instead of fixing things.”
