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March 29, 2005

South African Trade Detours United States

The news from South Africa last week painted a picture of a vacuum—a great empty space where coverage of the United States might once have been. South Africa’s newspapers suggest not the presence or influence of the United States, but its absence. The sole reporting from the U.S. among the country’s major newspapers revolved around the Michael Jackson trial, of which there was abundant wire coverage.

The Cape Times (subscription required) Cape Town’s leading morning daily, reported on a visit to South Africa by the Foreign Ministers of India, Natwar Singh, and of Brazil, Celso Amerin—focusing on their creation of a ‘Business Council’ with South Africa’s Foreign Minister Nkosazma Dlamini-Zuma to facilitate trade between the three countries. [Cape Times, 10 March, 2005] Specifically, South Africa is in the process of establishing closer relations with the member countries of the Mercosur trading bloc—Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay—and to bring South Africa into the web of trade accords between that bloc, of which Brazil is a leading member, and India.

The meetings between these powerhouses of the developing world take on new meaning in light of the dramatic slowdown in negotiations between Brazil and other Latin American nations and the Bush Administration in negotiating a Free Trade of the Americas agreement.
That effort to establish a NAFTA style, hemisphere-wide trade accord have floundered—while efforts to create an alliance among the tri-continental powerhouses of the southern hemisphere are taking on steam. The three countries have established an alliance, known as IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) “to strengthen south-south cooperation,” reports Angela Quintal, Political Editor for the Cape Times. Trade between the three countries amounted to $4 billion last year, the Cape Times reports; SA Foreign Minister Dlamini-Zuma said that the three nations hope that will grow to some $10 billion by 2007.

In the same week, several other developments suggested the growing ties between the three economic powerhouses of the developing world. According to The Sun Times (subscription required) a South African national daily, Brazil has endorsed the call of the African Union (in which South Africa is a major player) for two African seats on the U.N. Security Council—as well as a permanent seat for a representative from the Arab world. [The Times, 12 March, 2005] The paper suggests that if approved, Africa’s two seats would go to South Africa and Nigeria.

The Cape Argus, a Cape Town afternoon paper (subscription required), reports that India has also thrown its support behind this effort to expand membership in the Security Council. “The foreign ministers of India, Brazil and South Africa said the UN Security Council no longer represented the reality of today’s world,” writes Argus correspondent Thokozani Mtshali. “They reiterated their call for urgent and extensive UN reform and for it to be ‘responsive to the priorities of its member states’ especially the developing world.” [Cape Argus, 13 March, 2005]

Not one of the articles made reference to the U.S. position on this matter. While Michael Jackson’s squirming in Santa Barbara was by far the dominant news about America for South Africans, the main international reporting that week was on the gathering force of political and economic alliances that are detouring Washington altogether.

Posted March 29, 2005 06:50 PM

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