SA on Biden’s agenda

With US President-elect Joe Biden officially assuming office early next year, good days of US-South African cooperation lie ahead as the country is one of the top two on Biden’s African agenda.

He represents America’s complete break with the past and the ushering in of a new era.

Both on domestic and international fronts, he was expected to adopt a different “cautiously liberal” approach to that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who put Africa in the back-seat.

According to veteran US diplomat Johnnie Carson, Africa would top Washington’s agenda in the new administration.

Carson, now a senior advisor at US Institute for Peace in Washington DC, was optimistic that the Biden administration would establish stronger relations with nations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), particularly SA, Botswana and Namibia.

He hinted at even improving ties with Zimbabwe, adding that the US sanctions were merely directed at 60 political individuals and companies that undermined democracy.

“Biden will step up and improve relationship with all of Africa especially in southern Africa. He holds SA in high regard as one of four important states in Africa for having the best constitution on the continent and may have an exclusive high level engagement with the country.

“I think there will be strong efforts to strengthen relationships with not only South Africa but the entire SADC,” Carson said

Biden was an anti-apartheid campaigner opposed to the white regime in SA.

In a July 1986 video that recently circulated online, Biden, then a young Senator from Delaware, was shown lambasting then Secretary of State George Shultz and the Ronald Reagan Administration for supporting the white apartheid regime, which he described as “repulsive” and “repugnant”.

He said America must support the oppressed black majority who were being “crushed” by the white regime.

Biden was closer to the US civil rights movement that also campaigned for the isolation of white regime.

He paid a brief visit to SA in 2010 and had dialogue with former president Thabo Mbeki.

Carson expressed discomfort with SA’s exorbitant trade tariffs, which he said prevented smooth trade by US and other foreign
partners.

He emphasized this as the only sticking point on the way of investments and that even the Biden administration, liberal as it
is, could find unpalatable.

US political analysts and economists who interacted with The Citizen during the US presidential election seminar for foreign journalists, did not expect a change in US-China relations under Biden.

At least five commentators who spoke to The Citizen said Americans never trusted China, no matter which administration was in power.

This worsened after the outbreak of coronavirus, for which they blamed Beijing’s negligence, on which Trump based his “Chinese virus” comments.

US governance expert Akram Elias said 95% of US citizens did not care about foreign affairs, but domestic matters – and that’s
what they based their voting choices on.

Political journalist Eric Naki.

Eric Naki is Citizen Political Editor and he covered the 2020 US presidential election as part of a seminar organised by the EastWest Centre based in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. He was one of 12 foreign journalists attending the seminar virtually.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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