Lizeka Mda recently discovered that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States is a consummate salesman
WAYZATA is a picture postcard pretty town some 30 minutes south of Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota, with a population of about 3 000. On this Saturday afternoon, the weather is perfect for the northern hemisphere June – balmy and sunny.
The cream of the Twin Cities business and political elite are gathered under a marquee on the lawn of the home of Joel Conner and Gina Paulucci Conner. The setting for the finale of the Minnesota International Centre’s programme on South Africa couldn’t be more beautiful than this gracious home on Lake Minnetonka.
At the annual Gala Silent Auction, Franklin Sonn, the ambassador of the Republic of South Africa to the United States is relaxed. There is no tie with his suit. While he jokes about the perfect weather, saying it was only the least he could do to bring decent South African weather to the Minnesotans, he keeps track of what the deal is – business for South Africa.
He massages the continental ego of the Americans to get to their generosity and wealth. He thanks them for being with South Africa through thick and thin. For listening when the call was made for sanctions.
Minnesota, of course, is the home of 3M who did not disinvest, but who’s going to bring that up here? Especially since the company is one of the conference’s generous sponsors?
He lays it on rather thick. He thanks the US for loving South Africa. They wouldn’t be helping us rebuild the country if they did not care. Even as I’m chuckling to myself at his schmoozing, I cannot help but marvel at how good he is at this game. The audience, which knows very well what the score is, is lapping this up.
Admittedly, the relaxed Sonn adlibbing at the auction is more sympathetic than the technocrat delivering a stodgy text on Restructuring the Economy: South African Government Policies at the symposium.
Here’s a sample: “The restructuring of the South African economy is accordingly not an expedient or merely practical step, but is informed by our deep philosophy and commitment to openness and freedom in everything we do.
“The restructuring of the economy had to be profound and all pervasive. It had to be an economic system which befits our democracy in every way and does not only refer to the privatisation of state assets as is often wrongly assumed. The systematic selling off of state assets in a business-like manner and along business lines, forms a cardinal element of the restructuring process.
“This massive restructuring of the economy simply had to occur in a carefully planned way and it could have been disastrous had we allowed ourselves to be rushed into hasty, not well-thought through changes.”
Sonn went swimming for two hours and jogging for an hour. He’s relaxed, but still looks too wan. He says he jogs every day in Washington DC.
When winter makes that impossible, he is on the treadmill at 5.30am. “That’s why I’m thin,” he lies to himself. I think he is thin for the same reason Nelson Mandela is losing his hair, and Thabo Mbeki and Bill Clinton have heads of white hair. Politics is a nasty job. And Sonn’s job couldn’t be harder.
“Sanctions and disinvestment were a big shock to American investors,” he says. “It is against their culture of doing business to take political decisions. Consequently, American business takes a long time to take decisions.
“It is a hard job to tell them to come to South Africa, that we are serious about economic restructuring and a free market. They are concerned about the noises unions are making, talk about nationalisation, exchange controls, and the South African Communist Party, that maybe they cannot repatriate their profits.”
I had been told that Sonn was ready to come home. That in his arrogance he was boasting that he had completed his five-year mandate in two years.
He denies that he is even considering coming home before his time is up. Anyway it’s obvious that if he came home it would be throwing in the towel, not because his job was done.
“There was a tendency to feel that now that apartheid is gone, South Africa should find its own way,” he says. “When I came here I thought all of that comes automatically.”
At the symposium he sold the growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) strategy as an answer to the criticism from investors when he first arrived about the absence of a macro-economic plan.
“A macro-economic strategy, Gear was destined to underpin the Reconstruction and Development Programme. It served to re- affirm the government’s commitment to internationally acceptable policies, but also clearly laid out specific fiscal rules and revealed the clear intentions of a government determined to meet the needs of its people while becoming a worthy and respected member of the global community.”
Then he pretended not to sell Trevor Manuel: “The markets’ earlier scepticism of the new finance minister has been replaced by a perception that the African National Congress is capable and willing to tackle the economic challenges head-on and in an able manner, and that the new finance minister is tough-minded and able to deliver on fiscal discipline over the next few years.
“In the Department of Trade and Industry the restructuring process is on track, also led by a highly capable and internationally respected former trade unionist, Alec Erwin.”
And Mbeki, even though he says the deputy president has broken through on the “What happens after Mandela?” issue: “And the market has had the opportunity to come to the mind that we are serious by observing Deputy President Mbeki overseeing in an informed yet disciplined way the second South African miracle in the making.
“He is respected as a highly competent economic thinker and a leader, which affords his team the [freedom] to demonstrate their talents as long as they meet the objectives of achieving the economic restructuring towards sustainable economic growth and development. Only the uninformed have further concerns that our government for the foreseeable future – a decade or two – is in capable hands.”
He told a parable likening Mandela to an apple, and South Africa the tree that produced this saint-like apple. To applause, he said the tree was perfectly capable of producing more apples.
“If you’d asked me six months ago how it’s going, I would have told you it’s a battle. I try though. I go to every city they ask me. I tell them South Africa is not only an attractive investment on the strength of its own 43-million people [this was before the census shock], but it represents 300-million people in Southern African.”
He says his efforts are beginning to pay off because now there is a resurgence of interest in South Africa. “Because of what I term the death of distance, it does not matter where the factory is because people communicate electronically. All investors want to know is that the government supports them. We compete with Brazil and others for investment.”
The only fly that seems to threaten the ambassador’s optimism ointment is crime.
“It is not a deterrent so far, but people are concerned. Investors need to feel that crime is being dealt with. All references to corruption make investors nervous. We must get that under control.” But even for Sonn there are moments of relief. Like the cellular phone ringing to interrupt our conversation.
Someone from his office in Washington informs him that Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma has withdrawn the two Bills that were giving the pharmaceutical industry an ulcer. While I am dismayed, His Excellency is grinning from ear to ear. From his point of view that takes care of the headache of the all-powerful US pharmaceuticals whose government is often quick to threaten retaliation.
In this one incident I get some idea of the difficulty of a job that involves so much wheeling and dealing in Washington DC. And ambassador Sonn clearly has not taken to it.
“Washington is a difficult town,” is his at- first-taciturn response to my query. Then he shrugs and continues: “It’s a town of subterfuge and power games. If they don’t win you above the table, they will find other means. If you don’t satisfy them, the power blocks will badmouth you. It is not nice at all. It’s a constant challenge. People play hard ball.
“Washington is the capital of the world, and so it is all about power. People don’t care about money, but how much power you have.
“It’s a big market place. At dinners there are always people telling you where you should sit because of the sitting position of someone important. And at times they ask you off-the-wall questions. Gossip is traded vigorously. So you must be there to say `that’s nonsense’.”
Back at the auction, Sonn has this audience of wealthy liberal Minnesotans – including the mayor, a judge – eating out of his hand. He is talking about the exciting co- operation between this Goliath and David at the end of the world.
He speaks very well. And a nasty voice tells me he is exactly the kind of black Americans like to deal with. They comment – is it really with surprise? – on how well-spoken he is, at every opportunity.
The ambassador mingles. He is fantastic at reading name tags at a distance and greets everyone who approaches by name. And if they want to chat, he, for one, is all ears.
This is a far cry from the image of him I had gotten from two African-American women in New York. They said he was a snob who had shoved them aside at a function at the South African consulate. Perhaps Sonn has climbed a few steps on this learning curve.
Two staffers at the New York consulate had also painted a picture of a bumbling Falstaff whose capers had often landed him in hot water out of which the deputy president had to ladle him.
Perhaps it’s all these experiences that give him this humble demeanour I observe in Minnesota. I had expected the ambassador to have an entourage of minions attending to his every need. Instead he goes to the bar by himself to order an orange juice.
Even at the symposium, when I asked for a copy of his hand-written speech, he went to find a photocopier himself. He is alone. Except for Mary Tiseo, daughter-in-law of his Twin City hosts, George and Sally Pillsbury, who tries to keep up with him as he strides along doing it all by himself. And these are only “the” Pillsburys of The Pillsbury Company, the food and beverage giants.
Even then, as Tiseo hustles him off for a boat cruise on the lake with his hosts and the governor of the state of Minnesota, I can’t help but reflect that the salesman- like figure I encounter in the American Midwest is a shadow of the powerful rector of the Peninsula Technikon, not to mention the member of the boards of major South African corporations, and the executive director of New Africa Investments Limited.
Lizeka Mda is a freelance journalist in Johannesburg