Missing the bus: South Africa is becoming irrelevant in global affairs

About 20 years ago, a United States Navy state-of-the-art guided-missile cruiser received one of the most embarrassing messages in the post-World War II history of that service.

It came in a radio burst from a Daphne class submarine of the SA Navy, which had closed, undetected, to within lethal range.

“Bang, bang. You’re f…ing dead,” the SA submariners told the Americans, who were engaged in highly serious “war games” in the cold and rough seas off the Cape of Good Hope.

The incident emphasised the skill of the SA Navy’s “top gun” sailors and also underlined the vulnerability of shipping around the Cape… something said to be a crucial consideration during the Cold War between the Soviets and the West.

The security of the Cape sea route was one reason the Americans worked so closely with the National Party government in those years… and probably why, no matter what rhetoric is being spouted about our relationship with Russia, Washington is not about to abandon us.

In the words of then-American President Lyndon B Johnson, it’s much better for the US to have South Africa inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in.

We are still an important geo-political player in Africa.

And the Cape sea route is still a vital global trade route – especially for oil, the commodity that has sparked many a war.

However, if the US was to rely on its ally South Africa today to protect the shipping lanes in times of future conflict, there’d be a lot of ships at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Our navy’s three German subs, bought after the Daphnes were disposed of, don’t operate – thanks to a lack of budget, as well as bad maintenance.

But it is elsewhere in Africa where South African influence is rapidly waning and other countries are pulling ahead.

South Africa used to be the conduit for exports and imports for southern and central Africa.

But the collapse of our rail system and our ports – and the dangers of our road transport system, emphasised in this weekend’s fire bombing of trucks on the N3 highway – means we are slowly being avoided.

Already our own exporters are using Maputo in Mozambique, because it is more efficient.

A new rail link between Zimbabwe and Mozambique will further push us into the transport background – as will one between Zambia and ports in Angola.

And we don’t have the important minerals, such as lithium, which are driving the global economy.

While we still have powerful industrial investments in vehicle production (much of which goes to the African market), big automotive players are opening, or expanding, their operations in the rest of the continent.

The reason is simple: those countries are a lot closer to export markets in Europe, the Middle East and Asia than we are.

South African Airways used to market itself as “Bringing the world to Africa and taking Africa to the world”.

Apart from that sort of arrogance, which makes us hated across our continent, it failed to recognise that SAA would always be an “end of hemisphere” airline – a long way from real-world business.

Successful African airlines like Kenya Airways and Ethiopia have long since eaten SAA’s lunch there.

Perhaps it’s time for the rest of us to realise that South Africa is an “end of hemisphere” country … and becoming increasingly irrelevant in global affairs.