There is recent precedent for bad choices in diplomacy resulting in okay-ish outcomes.

When Peter Mandelson, an architect of the Tony Blair era, was appointed United Kingdom (UK) Ambassador to the United States (US), most baulked. Or vomited. But Mandelson quickly pivoted on previous remarks that US President Donald Trump was a racist and a homophobe and apologised. In doing so, he exposed that such commentary, beloved by South African media and academic elites, was just laziness, stupidity, or desire for validation, if not a confession of sexual angst.

When Mandelson got to work, he was able to secure one of the new administration’s cheapest trade tariff deals – totalling less than half of what Trump charged the European Union. He did this by shapeshifting into Trump’s confidence, endearing himself to Republicans who still valued the special relationship, and using his personal friendships to lobby profiles close to the president. His form was energetic and conciliatory: young Republicans, no fan of the man himself, recognised his efforts by awarding him a plaque.

Things went rapidly off-piste when Mandelson was fingered in an Epstein data dump. To nobody’s surprise, he was revealed to have lied to everyone about his relationship with the abhorrent pederast, despite there being documentary evidence available to the British prime minister, which included a photo of Epstein speaking to Mandelson while the latter purchased a thin, white rope belt on a Caribbean island. With faux indignation, Starmer stamped his feet: Mandelson’s duplicity had offended him, he had been betrayed – “nobody,” Starmer said, “is harder on me than me.”

Mandelson’s in big trouble now, and with Starmer considered by most as deliberately dismantling the UK’s relationship with the US – despite his continued military reliance – few will remember the former ambassador’s work in snatching a moderate deal from a policy trail that is now the subject of Supreme Court relief, and may not exist in the future.

Rationale

The most obvious rationale for the appointment of Roelf Meyer as the South African ambassador to the US – succeeding a demented fool of no consequence in Ebrahim Rasool – is that the South African president and his patsies at the African National Congress (ANC)-held Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) believe that Meyer may renew memory of a country that was.

The rationale makes assumptions – which suggests it may have been influenced by local editorial policies drafted by angry or confused people. Firstly, it assumes that Trump’s impressions of South Africa have never considered history. Secondly, it assumes a racial dimension to Trump’s analysis: if he won’t love a terrorist-idolising failed premier once accused of trying to pay off journalists, perhaps an enlightened white man thrust into a game of reverse-engineered race psychology may win him over? Both assumptions are accompanied by the enduring, pig-headed belief the ANC still possesses: that it remains the only true reflection of South Africa worth exporting.

ANC media, which accounts for what most South Africans read, are racing to defend the decision as “thoughtful” or “inspired”. As usual, none of these people are reading the room – nobody has sought to ask what possible difference Meyer could make at this point, given Rasool’s loutish behaviour they refused to condemn, and given that any opportunity to shift from hostility to cooperation is obviously, intentionally ignored.

Meyer’s role in negotiating a democratic transition has been lauded through decades. There is no doubt he is erudite and receptive, but what will be expected of him here is an exercise upon which he cannot use his experience of the 1990s; there, he was negotiating liberation, democracy, rights, and injustice – tomorrow, Adrian Vlok’s former deputy will be faced with accountability, transparency, and sensibility – things that have consistently maintained their position outside of today’s skewed, academic examination of identity and dispossession.

Watchful

Watching this process carefully will be Marco Rubio, a relative of refugees, whose own parents fled the Cuban Batista regime: Americans like him don’t appreciate attempts to monopolise prejudice and any default to the grievance narrative, which captured much of the Anglosphere’s consciousness and tempted the ANC into a series of unhinged policies (on the basis they could get away with them), will be politely deflected, with more substance urged.

This threatens to corner Meyer: the ANC has no new story to tell, and cannot play the victim. It cannot emphasise domestic fashionable “far right” threats to its survival – as they don’t exist. It cannot claim exploitation or foreign interference. It will be impossible to project its redress as economic successes when the Americans will have all read William Gumede’s icy research concluding those policies as scams. Furthermore, he’ll struggle to convince a country that wanted nothing to do with the Arms Deal that the ANC has learned its lessons through its performative inquiries, and at some point, he may face volleys of questions about MTN’s Iranian adventures – all of this before Elon Musk’s allegations about Starlink broad-based black economic empowerment overtures are put to him for comment.

Tempering the suspicion that the ANC is setting Meyer up to fail are two points. Firstly, Mandelson’s example – while apparently pointless – revealed that it is possible to persuade, coax, or flatter the Trump administration into some degree of favour. Secondly, there is Meyer’s own story: from being intimately embedded within the Nationalist architecture, he transitioned to the ANC at a time when the party appeared to represent more than the contamination of government procurement channels.

Hope

It's a faint hope, but hope nonetheless, that Meyer will be so spooked by the reputational decline and institutional suspicion that now prevails in Washington into acting country first, relegating the influence of the DIRCO to less than mood music and performing a turn similar to his transition in the 1990s. That means an emphatic grasp of new Democratic Alliance leader Geordin Hill-Lewis’ sentiments post his election on Saturday: the ANC, despite being the biggest party, is not the government.

This view also contains acknowledgement, while not explicit, that the party, by virtue of its electoral standing, is no longer entitled to leverage compassion to excuse itself. If too much political interference from DIRCO obscures these realities, then Meyer should resign, as there’s actually no point to him being there.