well big news overnight in South Africa is the appointment of a new US ambassador to the country or at least the proposed new US ambassador Not the man we thought We've been talking to Joel Pollock from Breitbart for quite a while He was tagged as the front runner He'd had a lot of involvement in South Africa lived here for a period of time but he's not the guy and somebody who knows all about ambassadors all about the US and certainly all about hopefully the new guy who will be coming as Tony Leon the former leader
of the opposition in parliament in this country Tony you've been tipped to be South Africa's new ambassador to the United States by Helen Zilla She really wants you to do that job Are you open to it well you know I it's very generous of Helen to have suggested my name and I appreciate her vote of confidence but she of course is not the decider Sura is and I suspect he'll choose one of his own uh to be an ambassador If I were approached and this is entirely hypothetical and speculative I wouldn't say yes or no
I'd interrogate as they say Alec in the law of retail uh terms and conditions because as I've said before and just perhaps I can elaborate now the personality even the person of the ambassador is significant but it's not the most significant thing the more important thing is what is the policy what is the alignment and uh can the diplomat have any uh effect on those two matters because if not you really on a hiding to nothing It's uh it's not going to change absent a change of South Africa's approach policy and it's uh the volume
it ratchets up or down on some key issues Uh and you know that that would require a serious conversation but but as I say I don't think it's uh it's I'm going to get a call and I but you know I don't say yes or no because uh it's hypothetical Yeah I suppose it's like anybody being made an offer at any business job You don't just jump in because it's CEO of SAB Miller It you find out first what's required of you But the point here is that you have been an ambassador before to a
country that was going through terribly difficult times and is now suddenly booming Argentina maybe if they offered you that job back again uh it it could be quite exciting Yeah Well look I I I love Argentina the place and the people I did not love the previous government of Argentina the Kersner Perinist administration when I was there Although I have to say although I' I'm quite valuable as you know in spoken and written word I never uttered a single word of public criticism of the Kersner administration while I was there It would have been not
only undiplomatic it would have been entirely counterproductive And I had to deal with a heap of issues Alec against what at the time was the most protectionist administration in the world And South Africa had very big interest there We Standard Bank had the seventh largest retail bank there Anglo Gold Ashanti had a huge mine uh down south and we had big agri bilateral products going in both directions and you know getting those through it was like literally going through the eye of a needle because Argentina was so important to push up the terms of trade
120% while I was there So I regarded that as an accomplishment and and that actually is the metric against which any ambassador should be measured Have you improved the terms of trade is there a uh an appropriate public diplomacy uh footprint that you've actually uh put your country's position in the best uh light and thirdly you know have you strengthened the bilateral relationship and you know without being immodest those three metrics were achieved while I was in office in Buenos Aaris Uh not in the easiest of circumstances Uh but uh it it it it was
a challenging period It's interesting that you've already outlined that for us because we're going to talk about the new ambassador in just a moment But Joel Pollock we've spoken about him He's you know him well He seemed to be right in pole position and he also seemed to be a an excellent choice for the United States at least somebody who knows a lot about South Africa having lived here and I think you told me that he was married to Roa Gadali's um daughter so he he knows the story and yet he didn't make it uh
perhaps because he himself is a little undiplomatic lately Well look I I have no idea you know how the State Department or the White House makes these appointments or selections Uh Joel Joel has a deep knowledge and actual empathy for South Africa Although you know he lost people think that there's some sort of you know whisper that I whisper in his ear or vice versa Complete nonsense Joel worked for me last 19 years ago or you know but I have high regard for his work ethic and his professionalism but I you know I don't know
what it was What interested me is a lot of people uh were saying on X or Twitter oh you know his campaign to be appointed ambassador has failed Well be careful what you wish for because whatever the pluses and minus of Joel would have been as an ambassador uh the actual person selected uh seems like a a flamethrower from the mega Trump world So I I would people who rejoicing in Joel's non- selection should be a little cautious about what might be coming our way soon or who might be Tell us about Mr Bozel the
man who has been selected Alec I know absolutely nothing about him Uh and to be honest until last night when I read up about him I didn't know of his existence But what I have read which seems to be incontestable is that he is a extreme conservative He uh is uh set up an NGO which uh takes on distortions in the uh so-called mainstream media He apparently thought I thought when I lived in America in 2007 that uh uh public broadcast radio was fairly mild He wanted it closed down for being uh uh biased He
his son was arrested and and sent to jail for his uh January the 6th storming of the capital and he himself uh denied the outcome of the 2020 election But what his views are on South Africa or indeed the wider world I have no idea I guess we'll get an intimation because every ambassadorial nominee has to go through a Senate selection process and that is when there'll be back and forth questions and answers and you might get some insight into how Mr Bozel views South Africa Yeah And it's not just gone to jail From what
I read his son is still in jail and he was sentenced to Well weren't they all released by Trump i I don't know Maybe Yeah Yeah So you know the thing about uh of course South Africa has a role in the ambassadorial process because um as as you know there's a process called Agria which means that the receiving country has to accept the credentials of the proposed ambassador So I guess that is going to be a test if you like for uh South Africa Now we know Mr Bozel's profile because you know it's available on
in in in on on the internet How's South Africa going to respond to this nomination is it going to greenlight it is it going to reject it is it going to play tit for tat after the rasool expulsion who knows it is an extraordinary selection This media research center I don't if you spent any time on it's been going since 1987 He started it himself uh it's it has a directive or its purpose is to attack pretty much what they call liberal media Now liberal in our country seems to have a different connotation to liberal
in the United States Yes I Yeah Look I'm to speak frankly you know I'm a liberal Well I'm a South African liberal probably I don't know where that place me in American context And I guess Alec without pigeon holeing you you'd probably also be a liberal yourself in the South African context I'm always a bit wary about uh people who take on you know uh who try and curb free speech from whichever perspective I I'm just have a a liberal response to that because um I think one of the great gifts of America to the
world uh is the uh first amendment the the right to free speech and I think it should have a multiplicity of outlets I don't think you can try and once you start attacking one of them you know many years ago I lectured uh constitutional and public law at Vitz University at the heights of aparate when there was big curbs on sens on free speech here through censorship and draconian government regulation and we used the United States uh free speech cases as exemplers of what you know a good democratic country should follow and and when there
starts being a push back against that within the foremost democracy and free speech uphold in the world I'm a bit weary But look you know uh I I haven't read what this uh crowd do but uh I I take your point that it's uh that it tries to curb you know media which is not a good thing in my view It's got it's got 925,000 hours of TV news uh in its archive 925,000 hours You got to be serious about it Uh they they have got 4,000 cases of alleged censorship Uh so it it really
does start becoming a little concerning I suppose from the outside when you say "Hang on if if the United States is the the leader of the free world and the greatest proponent of free speech are these guys promoting free speech or are they trying to trying to terminate it or Well who knows but well we'll no doubt have you know Mr Bozel's view on media and other matters uh coming to a movie house near us soon right here if he gets appointed Uh I I also saw a tweet from Donald Trump in 2018 uh when
he he quoted these guys and it just gives me I think a better insight where he says that their research the media research center maintains that 92% 92% of everything that was said about Donald Trump on ABC and CBS was false or biased in one way or another So he's certainly coming from a from a point of view Yes It certainly didn't stop Mr Trump's election You know I I think uh I I think uh there's a cottage industry around saying the media is biased and therefore don't believe anything they say on the one hand
and on the other hand using that alleged bias or the reality of bias to propel yourself forward which is exactly what Trump has done and therefore being able to dismiss criticism whether it's valid whether it's objective whether it's false or true as being of no account because it comes from a biased source I'd like to explore that with you as kind of the second focus area of our conversation today Uh for many years at the World Economic Forum I've been attending the release of the Edelman Trust Index and it's been interesting to see how that
develops It's every it's kind of it's on a Tuesday morning generally and Richard Edelman is there and there 33,000 people that are pled around the world including more than a thousand here in South Africa and the view there given that we've got this guy whose business is to to focus on media uh credibility the view from that from all of those 33,000 respondents around the world is that media is the least trusted of the most important areas business has a 62% % score NGO's 58 government 52 and media is exactly there at 52 that's overall
in South Africa is down to 46% that actually trust what's in the media so this is very fertile field for Mr Bozel one would think well I look I think he might have some other priorities if he's going to be the American ambassador here than exploring uh the media biases here or elsewhere because um as you know there's some sort of real uh big issues in the bilateral relationship of which I suspect media bias or objectivity is probably fairly low down on the list But what about Israel here's uh if you have a look at
his public profile he's got the Star of David up there Uh the last ambassador was uh well they were quite happy that the proposed uh or the frontr runner Joel Pollock was uh very strongly pro- Israel It appears as Mr Bozel's even more so Might that count against South Africa accepting him well look I don't know but uh whoever uh Trump is going to send to South Africa and to other significant outposts of American diplomacy is liable to be very pro-Israel that is uh very high up on the Trump administration list of uh issues and
um South Africa visav the United States and Israel is on the wrong side of that issue So actually whether it's Bozel or Pollock or some other person uh if America is going America's representative in South Africa in the world is going to have a very explicitly pro-Israel inclination that that's a fact the personality is less important than that policy because that is the policy of the Trump administration and South Africa as you know has got a completely contrary policy and that is one of the issues that uh is at the heart of the conflict between
America and South Africa right now So who actually makes the decision is it the the foreign affairs our foreign affairs department which is very uh strongly staffed by Muslim um Muslims themselves and uh and those who are uh sympathetic for the Palestinian cause or is it the president who would make this call well you know I I don't know what the interplay is when I was appointed ambassador was because Jacob Zoomer uh decided I should be an ambassador and he sent the instruction and Durko obliged I mean that's how it worked That's the only case
I I know of Um but I have to say that it's probably a combination Uh but I'm not sure that uh President Ramapor is fully in control of uh the department of international relations because he seems to have a and we saw this last week Alec So on the one hand his spokesman said look you must uh tamp down uh your uh utterances uh when you come back to South Africa That was a message sent to Rousul and the reception committee at Cape Town Airport Now the presidency well it should but doesn't uh have doesn't
control uh what the ANC crowd does and they were very exaltant at Rasool's return But Ibrahim Rasul is an employee of Durko It's not he's not some random person who came back and grabbed a megaphone he's a paid employee even though he's a defrocked ambassador And he came back grabbed a megaphone you know made a few more comments justifying the reason why he got expelled from America And uh this was seemed to me completely contrary to the instruction given by President Ramapora if you looked at what his spokesman had said a few days before But
Rousul went ahead and did it anyway And I have to say that um even the remarks that he made in the seminar which got him expelled from America either they were Ibrahim Rasool's personal opinion in which case he shouldn't have uttered them because he wasn't speaking as Ibrahim Rasul he was speaking about South as South Africa's ambassador to the United States or indeed they were the instructions that he received from the department of international relations I don't know what the answer is because there's been no apology from South Africa for the remarks of depicting the
host country as a supremacist administration So yeah you go figure Alec who who's actually in charge uh I saw Sam Pesu yesterday it's his personal prerogative or presidential prerogative to appoint ambassadors and he's not even going to consult his coalition partners Well I don't know how the coalition partners are going to respond to that but it does seem to me that if you've got a coalition government it shouldn't just be uh the 40% party that gets to choose ambassadors If indeed the ambassadors are being chosen uh from the political uh list and not from the
professional list Moving on to that as the final point that I wanted to explore with you This government of national unity seems to be creaking at the moment Uh the budget the DA is standing firm France Cornier says it's it it cannot afford not to stand firm and and not to take the position that it has Uh and then the ANC very publicly has gone out and asked or tried to bring in other parties which including action yesterday have rejected them So it looks like they're going to have to do something there How are you
reading this well look I I think the budget leaving aside the merits and demerits of the budget and the tax hikes and so forth is an interesting test for the GNU And you know the DA for example gets a lot of flack Why don't you do this why haven't you stop that well there's an arithmetical issue because the DA only has 22% of the votes And those votes or that percentage is of less relevance when it comes to decisions made inside the cabinet I mean the DA should have much more heft should have much more
uh of a veto in the government of national unity than it does if the ANC honored the statement of intent which was signed between the parties which is observed primarily in the breach but where the DA and other parties have real power is not in the cabinet but in parliament and that is why the budget is so fraught alle at the risk of uh boring you because it doesn't depend on the presidential prerogatives which they keep paring on about the ANC it entirely depends on a vote in parliament It's a straight up and down vote
the budget yay or nay And that's where the ANC's lack of uh electoral support It's only a 40% party actually comes into play So when people say the DA should do this or the DA should do that well the electorate only gave it 22% So it has got 22% That 22% becomes hugely significant not in the cabinet but in parliament And the budget is a a creature of parliament It's not a consequence of decisions made in the cabinet It starts in the cabinet but the final says in parliament So the the more things are referred
to parliament whether it's the budget or a new law that's where the DA and other minority parties have real power in and outside the GNU So I think yes I think this is a test And yes I don't think the DA can climb down and say "We gladly accept the tax hikes in exchange for nothing Maybe you accept a VAT raise but you get a list of concessions in exchange for that." So this is a the beginning as Helen Zilla said of coalition politics And if if there isn't a change uh she was also telling
us at the business news conference that the DA will vote line for line when it goes through parliament which also gives it a very a very different complexion to what happened in the past Exactly And and I think you're seeing that playing out as we say in real time And well let's see how this ends Look there's still weeks actually I think months Alec until the final budget the division of revenue bill is enacted by parliament or not enacted So you know I I suspect there'll be some negotiation maybe some concessions I don't think we've
seen the end of the movie I think we're in the middle of it right now If you'd stayed in Parliament you would have been in the cabinet You would have been involved in uh in all that's going on now Isn't the fact that the ANC is looking for alternative partners to kick out the DA going to make the conversations in the cabinet room a lot more catchy in future i think it might Um but you know just to reprise a conversation I had with one of the key DA people it's actually the the the the
ANC is very choice averse It doesn't like to make hard choices and politics and life is about those hard choices So it actually has legitimate choice to make Does it want to align itself as it's doing very uneasily and for many of them unhappily with a centrist party like the DA or does it want to align itself with a radical uh extremist party like the EFF or the MK that is a legitimate choice Now they've made the choice uh last June by aligning with the DA but they almost have spent the last seven or eight
months trying to undermine the choice they've made or trying to say yes but or no Uh not really And that's because of the internal dynamics in the ANC which are all over the place And um I think that at some point sooner or later it's going to have to reconcile itself with the choice it made last year by aligning with the DA or indeed make another choice with you know hugely delletterious consequences for the country the economy and you know a lot of folk who are battling at the moment will just find their lives getting
even worse if the ANC uh decides to go in another direction However inadequate the uh situation might be right now there's every chance that if the ANC makes another choice uh and align against the DA with the EFFMK is going to get a hell of a lot worse Maybe to close off with uh at our conference as well Paul Mashhatell said that the ANC has learned a heck of a lot in the last few weeks What do we have to look out for to see practically whether those learnings have been implemented or are being implemented
in governance in South Africa well Alec I I the big test of course is the budget I mean are they going to actually yield to the arithmetic of the situation that they're a 40% party who needs the buyin of other parties to pass a budget based broadly on consensus concessions and compromises or are they going to behave as they have hi the two as though they're a 70% party even though they aren't in reality So I I think that that's the immediate test and as I say that that's the critical one because on everything hangs
on the budget uh and and what comes out of this process But um I think the ANC is going to learn that it can't just sort of railroad other parties into doing what they don't want to do and what it wishes to do regardless of the compromises embedded in the situation And uh you know coalitions are all about compromises and the ANC well I hope Mr Mashetti is correct I hope they act on the heck of a lot they've learned in the last two weeks Um and I think they're in a stage of denial You
know at one stage when we were negotiating uh this uh government of national unity um the mayor of Cape Town Jordan Hill Lewis received a was on an investor call and and one of these investment companies said to him you know just give the ANC the mental space to actually acclimatize the fact that they didn't get 50% um you know so just pretend and and allow them to do that Well I thought that was quite funny But actually that suggestion uh proved to be correct The ANC still doesn't seem to have acclimatized despite them saying
that they have that they are no longer you know uh rulers and masters of this country that they have to make concessions They need compromise and they need the buyin of their partners And you know Alec uh I'm a dribbalized attorney The uh basis of any partnership in law or in politics is the utmost good faith And I think there have been some spectacular instances on the ANC's part of bad faith So hopefully with the learning curve that deputy president Masha told your conference that they're on they can learn that you know with good faith
everything is possible with bad faith nothing is it's quite interesting the point you make there as well and perhaps they are still going through those stages of grief that Elizabeth Kubler Ross outlined for us rejection denial acceptance and finally commitment and uh quite a way to get to acceptance and commitment yet But it is for those of us in the outside very interesting to watch Could could the ambassadorship to the US be another one of these uh points that could go down to the wire that the coalition partners might stand firm on well they can
stand firm I mean that that's something that uh is not normally subject to uh the cabinet making this selection but I would think if the president is serious about keeping his coalition on the road he will discuss not just the ambassador to America but other posts with his coalition partners and also without you know turning into a sort of bargain you know there needs to be some division of of of these positions so that actually South Africa is represented by the parties in the government You know it's interesting when Jacob Zoomer uh offered me an
ambassadorship back in 2009 before state capture I need to say he he said something to me that was very interesting He said the face of South Africa in the world should not just be the face of the ANC And I was arguably one of the most recognizable non-ANC faces And I I thought that was interesting because at the time the ANC had more than 60% of the votes Now that the ANC's only got 40% of the votes or the public support uh are for the face of South Africa and the world shouldn't just be the
ANC At the moment it's 100% ANC So the arithmetic in diplomacy in parliament and in the cabinet should reflect the reality given to us by the electorate Tony Leon the chairman of resolve communications and he was involved in putting the coalition together at the behest of the DA I'm Alec from businesswe.com [Music]
