Opinion: South Africa’s visit to the U.S. shows how diplomacy has changed

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Diplomacy is an art that has often most effectively been practiced behind closed doors. But the 47th president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, has changed that. Diplomacy is now practiced in the full glare of the world’s TV cameras and media, leaving very little room to wriggle — but an ocean of opportunity for disaster.

The net effect has been a total recalibration of the practice of diplomacy, with May 21 being a perfect case in point when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led his entourage to the White House.

The fact that the meeting even took place was a triumph of old-school diplomacy given the unprecedented depths that the historic relationship between the two nations has plunged, especially since the advent of the 47th administration in January this year.

There was massive trepidation back home in South Africa about just how this meeting would evolve, especially after the public dressing down that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was forced to endure in February. This time, the tactics were the same: The White House presented unvarnished beliefs about the situation in South Africa, which Trump has held very firmly, this time via a video pastiche.

Ramaphosa’s party was astutely selected, blending key political leaders, including organized labor, with officials, business leaders and golf champions, who were neither politicians nor administrators.

It was an example once again of how much has changed in the last six months — and even beyond — in Africa and in the world. South Africa has moved from declaring itself neutral in the war in Ukraine to actively protecting Russia from censure to inviting Zelenskyy to a state visit in April. The U.S. has moved from actively, and sometimes unquestioningly, backing Kyiv and sanctioning Moscow to actively engaging with President Vladimir Putin rather than isolating him.

Both countries’ approaches seem poles apart and inherently contradictory — and yet they share very similar motivations and characteristics. Washington and Pretoria want the war to end, both are working hard to do just that and both are using nontraditional, sometimes disruptive, methods.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative was the first seed in a bid to reap a harvest of peace. It was sown by an initiative under South Africa’s leadership to get Ukraine and Russia — or their proxies — to a table. The first hoped-for outcome was to prevent Africans from starving after they were cut off from the breadbasket of Eastern Europe and the fertilizers produced there to grow their own crops. But the bigger prize was to forge swords into ploughshares because the geopolitical tensions of an increasingly volatile and multipolar world were playing out in African countries as they became substitute battlegrounds in the war for global influence.

Private individuals, business leaders and philanthropists helped to bring the different parties together by leveraging their networks and stepping in where normal diplomatic channels had failed. The Black Sea Grain Initiative led to a previously unthinkable invitation: Pretoria offered to host Zelenskyy. Previously, Pretoria had earned Washington’s ire for refusing to back a United Nations General Assembly resolution censuring Russia.

The intervention of unorthodox players happened in Washington, too, as Ramaphosa sat in the Oval Office with Trump. It was no surprise that some at the meeting were golfers themselves, stepping in where diplomats and political leaders could not, to help drive through Pretoria’s message.

South Africa came to the U.S. to recalibrate a relationship that has been increasingly under threat for months; a growing ideological gulf in the majority party of its unity government has been a contributor. Coming to America forced a timely reappraisal of South Africa’s issues, and in the process, the South African delegation did much to disabuse the U.S. administration of some of its most firmly held views.

South Africa does have serious societal issues to contend with, including high levels of violent crime — and no one shied away from this problem, but white South Africans are not disproportionately affected by it. To properly address the issue is not a matter of being a supplicant who begs for international aid, but rather of building the economy, creating jobs and instilling hope in new generations of South Africans.

To achieve that, the U.S. must be an active trade partner with South Africa — continuing with the current trade agreements and even boosting investment in the country, to everyone’s benefit.

There is no doubt that the recent meeting between U.S. and South African officials was an inflection point in Washington-Pretoria relations. Taking a cue from Trump, it was akin to sinking a 3-foot putt in the full glare of the cameras, which isn’t an easy thing to do — and yet, I think the South Africans, together, might just have done it.

Ivor Ichikowitz is a South African-born global industrialist and African philanthropist. He chairs the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, which played a leading role in facilitating the talks that led to the Black Sea Grain Initiative. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune.