The world needs a better United States

In 2010 South African President Jacob Zuma asked me to serve as the country’s ambassador to the United States. Coming straight from Cape Town’s tough political battlefield, where I had most recently served as the governor of the Western Cape province, I had very little need for diplomacy. I suspect I was given the ambassadorship mostly because I had the foresight to engage the unknown visiting senator from Illinois in 2006, on issues ranging from HIV in Africa to the future of the Middle East, for almost two hours in my office. Two years later, he would be elected the first black president of the United States.

I arrived in Washington in 2010 amidst an outpouring of love for Nelson Mandela, whose frailty and mortality at the time created fears that he may soon be no more. At the same time, the hope and change on which president Barack Obama sailed to victory was being hobbled by a more pragmatic managerialism in the face of a persistent economic recession, declining approval ratings and a governance system that was divisive and gridlocked.

I soon realized that I represented more than South Africa’s interests. I was also a representative of a heroic anti-apartheid struggle and the resulting transition that had inspired countless Americans.  At the same time, I was also a Muslim representative arriving in the wake of the “war on terrorism” and the rising tide of Islamophobia in the West. There was a palpable curiosity by those in the anti-apartheid movement, the Muslim community and those familiar with my thinking, about the type of diplomacy I would bring. Would I be Ideological, moralistic and strident, or quiet, cautious and acquiescent?

Although I came to the United States as a representative, I left as an observer of America’s strengths and shortcomings. Five years on, I look back at a fascinating and enriching period of my life, and reflect on five critical lessons.

First, I learned that diplomacy is the art of telling the truth intelligently and gently whether speaking about South African or U.S. foreign policy, which I believe remains inconsistent and historically reliant on militarism. Points of disagreement, I believed, should be discussed and debated, without either diminishing the crucial role that the U.S. plays in the world or allowing any of my own predisposition to reduce the ability to be heard or heeded.

Second, I learned the U.S. shifts by degrees and decades, not dramatically. For all its valorization of individualism, the U.S. is governed by a deeply embedded institutional system, resistant to change while constantly appearing to change. The players may be replaced, but the playbook endures. When the 2011 Arab Spring protests provided the U.S. with an opportunity to strike out a new path in the Muslim world toward the less predictable but more sustainable path of human rights, freedom and democracy, it blinked at the first signs of murkiness. Yet recent efforts at détente with Cuba and Iran show that we may be witnessing the assertion of a less militaristic and unilateral approach.

Third, Washington can’t help relating to Africa other than through the lens of aid, disaster relief and security, rather than as a continent of economic opportunity. To its credit, the U.S. has done great work on matters such as preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, and it has been vocal in supporting democracy and human rights in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But Obama’s Africa policy is largely rooted in symbolic commitments. During his most recent trip to Africa and at last year’s first U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit, Obama talked about $33 billion of U.S. investment in Africa, made up largely of pre-committed private investments. Even the new initiative, Power Africa, is limited to advancing renewable energy and would be insufficient to help kick start Africa’s industrial revolution, which would require a significant base of energy sources. Trade provisions such as the African Growth and Opportunities Act and the Third Country Fabric laws need regular congressional renewal, and are renewed mostly as an afterthought at the eleventh hour when cancellation of export orders are already looming.

Fourth, I learned that despite signs of anti-immigrant intolerance, the U.S. remains fundamentally attractive to foreigners. The American dream promises freedom and rewards initiative. As the world’s largest economy, it has a consumer base of 350 million people, all of which have made the U.S. an attractive market for exporting countries. Its huge educational and technological base often allows the country to invest in research and development, as well as provide the requisite development aid to extend the frontiers of science and access products and expertise to fight diseases such as HIV and Ebola.

The final lesson is evident in an observation made by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who during the 2011 Egyptian revolution recommended, amongst others, the South African constitution — and not the U.S. constitution — as the model for post Arab Spring societies. South Africa’s constitution, approved in 1996, establishes equality and dignity as cornerstones, and includes such socio-economic rights as the rights to health, shelter and pensions. America’s founding document, by contrast, excludes socio-economic rights in favor of basic liberal rights such as freedom of expression and outmoded ones such as the right to bear arms.

Such fundamental limitations are beginning to reveal fault lines in U.S. society with greater frequency. Although the public voices sympathy for victims of brutal shootings, curbing gun violence through robust policies remains impossible. The continuing police mistreatment of young black men sparks protests, but not substantive reform. Resistance by congressional Republicans to the Affordable Care Act dramatizes the fragile commitment the U.S. has to the equality and well-being of its citizens, as more and more people will be excluded from basic rights and privileges as inequality widens.

For the U.S. to continue to become a better country and partner to the world, it must make several transitions. It must go from militarism and unilateralism to engagement and détente in solving global problems. It should move from Africa as an afterthought and security problem to Africa as the last economic frontier to be developed in the mutual interest of the U.S. and the world’s most youthful continent. And it must shift from its rampant individualism to a more balanced social solidarity to manage and overcome the fault lines that continue to emerge in American society. The world needs the U.S. to be at peace with itself.