Trump's US is looking for a political showdown with South Africa

The debate on Ebrahim Rasool's public expulsion as South Africa's ambassador to the US has focussed on the wisdom of his remarks. But this debate misses the substantive issues at stake. First, the public way the expulsion was done suggests that the US is looking for a political showdown with SA.

The US is doing this expulsion in this undiplomatic and humiliating manner because it wants to make an example of SA. It wants to send a message to the rest of the developing world that there are consequences for challenging US interests and its international and political agenda.

So if it was not Rasool's remarks, it would have been something else. It was a matter of time before this happened? The question is, what are the options for, and possible responses of SA? Three options seem to be emerging in the debate? The first is that of AfriForum and the DA.

Some will say I should not equate AfriForum and DA. But on SA foreign policy responses, they both come from the same vantage point, even if the DA is more subtle and sophisticated. Essentially, they both suggest that we bend the political knee to the US and align our interest with it.

Their motivation; the US has all the cards. It is our biggest trading partner, and were it to act against us as a nation, there will be significant costs to pay by ordinary citizens. As much as people will chafe at this,  their analysis is true, and we need to be aware of this.

But the challenge with their response is that we have to give up our independence, not least on foreign policy. It will also require concessions on the domestic front. Trump's track record suggests he reacts to concessions by demanding more, and our domestic agenda will be impacted.

I have been critical of the ANC's enrichment agenda, which it packages as redistributive, but I am not supportive of handing our domestic policy to the Trump regime. The development consequences will be horrendous for SA. This is what the DA does not see with its 'US alignment'.

The converse view on the other extreme is that of the EFF with its silly macho response that we should respond in kind if Pollak is appointed as US ambassador. Its remarks suggest a party incapable of thinking through consequences and how to manage these. They should be ignored.

Somewhere in between these responses is Mbeki, who suggests that we should recognise the legitimacy of the Trump administration, given that he was the democratic choice of the American people. And we need to engage the US administration through tireless diplomatic efforts.

Mbeki also suggests that we need to engage domestic Afrikaners -meaning AfriForum and perhaps the FF - to impress on them that their interests cannot be resolved by appealing to foreign governments. They are, after all, domestic citizens and should want to resolve their concerns in SA.

This seems a sensible set of actions, but what Mbeki ignores is that this is not the world of 20 years ago. The Western Alliance is fracturing rapidly, and Trump is intent on unravelling traditional global institutions to replace them with a transactional international policy.

Tireless diplomatic engagement is unlikely to work with this US administration. Neither are appeals to AfriForum going to work. It is worth saying that most Afrikaners do not see AfriForum as their representatives. They see themselves as citizens of SA and have no other home.

We could, as a nation, change the political discourse in relation to our fellow Afrikaner citizens. We should not allow the crude nativist chauvinisms of the EFF, MK and even some in the ANC to define the national narrative. Afrikaners have been in SA for just under 400 years.

Afrikaners are now indigenous to our country. Make peace with it, recognise it, say it publicly, and define it as part of the national narrative. This is far more important than appealing to AfriForum who are part of a global far-right agenda, even if they do not recognise it.

So what can we do? 1st, we need to be less vulnerable economically to adverse US actions. Trump's aggressive actions against allies are fracturing the West and creating alternative alliances worldwide. We need to be open to engaging these with a view to accessing opportunities.

Some of this can come from Western Europe. Some of it can come from China, and some of it can come from BRIC partners. But most can come from a more coherent African economic agenda. None of this is possible without a coherent plan and a capable state, neither of which we have.

This is why building a capable state is important. The current cohort of political leaders and senior civil servants are out of their depth for this kind of complex political agenda. We need to take merit seriously in constructing the public service, and we need a political plan.

It is worth saying that we cannot make up for the loss of benefits from the US relationship in the short term. This means that we will have to buy time, swallow our pride, and make concessions to the US. But we should be engaging China to see what mitigation effects they can enable.

This will not come without costs either. We need to behave like adults and recognise that everyone has interests. We need to align our interests with those where we can maximise national gains. This does not mean that we give up our ambitions. But it requires us to be pragmatic.

We need to position ourselves today to achieve our long-term ambitions and goals. Play the long game; make choices that advance our National agenda, deal with the trade offs and choose those with the least onerous effects. But never give up on our goals. Let them guide our actions.

We can never be free without power and leverage. But it is possible to build these and navigate our world. See how India does it even with a right-wing regime. They use size as their leverage. We need to determine what our leverage is and how to use it in our engagement with the world.

These are the issues we should talk about. But this is not where the public discourse is. It is fractured, with some aligning with the US attack and others criticising them for being unpatriotic. Much of the debate is criticising Rasool's naivety. And the govt's remarks are vacuous.

We need a richer, more nuanced, and thoughtful political discussion. This, I fear is not happening. We wasted many years focusing on the enrichment of political cronies and ignoring the hard choices that come with economic development. Let's not make this mistake again.