/ 31 October 2008

Reviving the American dream

Not long ago it was fashionable to say that American elections didn’t matter much to the rest of the world. Democrats and Republicans, the argument went, were simply variations on a theme, and alterations in executive power between the two parties made no substantive difference abroad. In a more extreme version, it was said that they didn’t make much difference in the United States either.

It was always a silly argument, and after eight years of George W Bush, one that is not often heard nowadays.

The absurd and endless “War on Terror” provides the most obvious evidence that it matters deeply who sits in the Oval Office, but it is not solely the foreign policy stance of the president that determines how the exercise of American power shapes the world that the rest of us have to live in.

The White House does not have exclusive control of economic policy — the power of the purse rests finally with Congress — but it does have immense influence over its direction.

The stance of the administration on subsidies for farmers, or borrowing to fund state expenditure, for example, can have dramatic effects far beyond the US, and the consequences of reckless deregulation of the banking sector are now tipping the global economy into recession.

Energy policy has even more serious spin-offs: it may be to Sarah Palin’s home state, Alaska, that untapped reserves of oil and gas belong, but the carbon spewing out of tailpipes from sea to shining sea is bequeathed to a much wider, warming, world.

Most of that world is fed up with the US — or perhaps more accurately, with the US they have had to live with for the best part of a decade. But it is not crude anti-Americanism that fuels the anger and disappointment in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America, it is the disastrous policy choices of an ignorant and arrogant administration.

Talk as much as you like about the rise of China, or Russia, or even of the European Union, it is the American gleam, dimly glimpsed now through the fog of war, that still grips the popular imagination.

Barack Obama’s overwhelming popularity outside the US is in part due to his promise to renew that dream on terms that make sense for the 21st century. He represents an America that the world can get on with and aspire to once again. We are as giddy as anyone else about his increasingly likely election. He not only holds, but articulates brilliantly, views on race, economic policy and diplomacy that we recognise and share. But a few cautionary notes are in order.

Firstly, he has an American constituency to answer to, and he may well make choices, particularly in trade policy, that satisfy that constituency at our expense. African farmers, excited by the thought of a son of Kenya as the world’s most powerful man, should take note of his backing for agricultural subsidies that help keep their products out of US markets.

Secondly, he faces complex choices about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia, which he must ultimately resolve in the US’s interest. What that will mean remains unclear.

And finally, he will not govern unchecked. Even with strong Democratic majorities in the Senate and Congress, he will have to make compromises. There is no way any president can meet the expectations heaped on him.

South Africans cannot vote in this election or endorse a candidate, but we can hope for, and ask our American friends to vote for, a new style of leadership that we can believe in.

DGs who dig too deep
Twenty-seven days — that’s how long it took for cracks to emerge in the picture of stable government President Kgalema Motlanthe is desperately trying to project to the world. After sacking Thabo Mbeki, the ANC promised to continue implementing the programmes of his government until national elections next year. Stability was Motlanthe’s watchword. Yet this week saw the abrupt swapping of directors general in the sports and correctional services departments. The official justification is that their relationship with their respective political masters has broken down irretrievably.

Vernie Petersen was summarily ordered to empty his desk and move to sport, while Xoliswa Sibeko was told to take over from Petersen in correctional services. The DGs have had to take the rap for the “bad relationships” with their superiors. In the case of Petersen, who knows South Africa’s prisons intimately as a former social worker and regional commissioner, this has meant effective demotion.

Both DGs were doing what ordinary South Africans expect them to do — they got their hands dirty uncovering the irregular spending of public money. In a public service fraught with irregularities they were committed to doing the right thing.

What message is the Motlanthe government sending if department heads are shifted when they delve too deeply into their portfolios and, in Petersen’s case, the activities of their political principals? There is a strong suspicion that he has been sidelined for resisting Ngconde Balfour’s desire to award a prisons contract to a company under investigation for tender-rigging.

Motlanthe has a duty to assure South Africans that officials who set their face against malpractice will not themselves face sanctions. The practice of shifting or axing those who do their work too well is a bad memory from the Mbeki era. The new president and the post-Mbeki ANC must walk the talk about breaking with the past.