Consultants

By Andre Jaquet

Washington Embassy

Coordinating the efforts of professional lobbying firms hired by our Embassy in Washington in the 1970’s to try and stop sanctions on apartheid South Africa was quite a big job. Many Embassies use hired guns in the United States because in their three or four year postings, foreign diplomats cannot possibly understand, never mind manipulate the complicated American political process sufficiently to influence matters to the benefit of their country. As a result, those that can afford to do so, hire former US politicians and other spin doctors to guide their efforts.

At that time, South Africa must have been one of the countries that hired more lobbyists than any other state because there were serious divisions back home between the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Information, Trade and Industry, Defence and National Security on how best to counter the call for sanctions against South Africa. If ever there was a stupid idea it was trying to sell segregation in the United States, which was still overcoming its own trauma of race division.

Nevertheless, various divisions in the Embassy hired several consultant firms to try to do so. The powerful Information section by-passed the Ambassador and reported directly to their Head Office at home. They took an aggressive, right wing line by hiring a lobbyist that was close to the most conservative of conservatives in the USA. The Department of Trade and Industry used lobbyists that tried to draw a distinction between trade and diplomatic ties. For our part, we at Foreign Affairs preferred a less confrontational approach and tried to reach the main trends of American opinion. No doubt our intelligence and defence communities back home had engaged other firms without our knowledge.

These consultants were registered with the US authorities in terms of the law but I had more than a suspicion that there was a steady flow payments taking place under the counter. This was, to say the least, both unethical and unwise in an open society such as the US. The failure of this divided and at times illegal approach was predictable. There was a fundamental lack of understanding in the South African Cabinet about the nature of US politics which favours expediency over ideology.

The point of this comic/tragic little tale is that in the minds of politicians in South Africa and in most countries, international matters weigh far less than domestic concerns. How to balance the efforts of the state to extract maximum benefit for the nation from its outside contacts is a conundrum that has confronted societies since the first cave man used a club to assault an intruder who was encroaching on his area of influence. I suspect that the problem of paying politicians for favours will remain with us forever. At the time of writing, the New York Times carried an editorial about the illegal funding of Political Action Committees as a major concern.

Le plus ca change….