Mishal Husain: So you see a direct parallel between what the United States has been through in a terms of civil rights and the movement toward economic equality in the process that South Africa's going through?
Susan Rice: I want to be careful there. I used it as an example to show how difficult it is. But I think the struggle from the American perspective -- hard as that has been and continues to be -- is dwarfed in comparison to what you're looking at in South Africa. In the case in the United States, you're talking about affirmative action -- let's just talk about it in the case of African Americans -- to benefit 12 to 13 percent of the population that was a minority that was disenfranchised and haunted by the economic and social and psychological legacy of slavery and discrimination. In South Africa, you're talking about 75 percent of the population. And so it is a vastly greater challenge. So when you judge the success of the South Africans, it is helpful to look at our experience and say for a smaller magnitude challenge it has taken us and continues to take us a great deal of time to make progress and we're not there yet. So to talk about South Africa with its exponentially greater challenge succeeding in a short decade is just ridiculous.
Mishal Husain: But one basic thing that's the same in the two places is the bottom line that political rights doesn't necessarily lead to economic equality and certainly not over night.
Susan Rice: Absolutely, absolutely.
Mishal Husain: Let me just ask you for a moment about the details of the relationship between South Africa and the United States. I mean this is the country that is the United States' biggest trading partner in Africa. How important is it for the United States, if this is an economy that makes this transition to deracialization and that is on firm equal fitting for the future?
Susan Rice: I think it's very important. It's important for a variety of reasons. And if I can, I'd like to go into some depth on them. First of all from an economic point of view, South Africa is the largest economy on the continent, our largest trading partner, an engine for economic growth and development for much of the rest of southern Africa and, in fact, Africa more broadly. South Africa's increasingly, for example, the largest foreign investor in various other parts of Africa. So as its economy goes, so to will go much of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. And we have a stake in South Africa and Africa's success. Our own economy, as you know, is increasingly dependent on trade and investment and exports to the rest of the world. And Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa in particular, represents really the world's last untapped market for the United States. And as the market in Africa grows, so too will there be benefits in the United States as well as for the people of Africa. Right now, about 100,000 American jobs depend on U.S. exports to Africa. As Africa grows, that number will grow from the United States point of view. It will also mean benefits for companies, businesses, and, hopefully, average people on the African continent. The United States share of the African market it's very small, it's only about 8 percent. So we have a stake in that market growing and our share of that market growing. And the kind of investment that we can bring -- particularly if it's sensitive to the environment, to labor standards if we come with a sense for our own history and a sense of obligation to be part of creating a better future in places like South Africa through supporting and leading on black economic empowerment -- we can make a very important difference for the people of South Africa and the continent more broadly. But the United States has a significant and growing economic stake in Africa. And obviously with South Africa being the most important piece of that puzzle from an economic point of view, we have to care deeply about it, and then there are political and security reasons as well as moral reasons why we have a stake in South Africa's success.
Mishal Husain: I think on the trade issue one of the difficult things certainly as perceived by many Africans is that United States is always talking about reducing barriers to free trade. At the same time, it's much less open to doing things to combat its own trade barriers, things like subsidies to farmers. Is that the kind of thing that, as this trading relationship, as this economic relationship grows, things like that are going to become increasing issues?
Susan Rice: Yes, but I think we've got to break these into the pieces that are, in fact, separate. The United States has, along with the Europeans, a set of policies, subsidies that are extremely harmful in the agricultural sector to the developing world and to Africa as a whole. Now South Africa, because its economy is far more diversified than many other African economies, is actually less adversely affected in the aggregate biagricultural subsidies than say Mali or Burkina Faso whose economy depends a great deal on cotton production.
Mishal Husain: It's a much more developed economy -- South Africa?
Susan Rice: Yes, and diversified but cotton is king in large parts of West Africa and it's our cotton subsidies that are killing West African farmers. It's the Europeans beef subsidies and our own sugar subsidies that are hurting other parts of the continent, but South Africa has an important agricultural base and it is not immune from the impact of our agriculture subsidies. And this is something that we need to deal with, in my opinion, as a matter of urgency. We have to get past our own domestic political constraints and recognize that we have a security as well as an economic stake over the long term in allowing economies in the developing world to flourish. By keeping them down, we're doing ourselves long-term harm.
Mishal Husain: Does deracializing South Africa's economy, though, make a difference to its relationship with the United States? If South Africa remains an economy as it is at the moment still controlled by the white minority, ultimately does that matter to the U.S.?
Susan Rice: Yes, because it's inherently unstable as long as that's the case. It's going to be politically unstable and economically unstable, and the combination of the two could mean it becomes a security risk. And I'll come back to why I say that. But the South African society cannot succeed unless with political change comes economic change as well, and change that benefits the majority population. If that doesn't happen then the democracy is threatened, then civil society can be torn asunder, then you could have a return to racial violence, you could have pressures of the sort that accumulated and were manipulated in neighboring states to redistribute land. And South Africa no longer becomes a potential engine of growth for much of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, but could deteriorate, in worst case scenario, and I don't expect this to happen, into a fragile and or a failed state. And that's a security risk to the United States because in South Africa you've got great infrastructure. You've got a long coastline. You've got very precious resources like gold and diamonds. All of the sorts of things that you would not want to see fall into the hands of terrorist or others who could manipulate them and exploit them and do us and the people of Africa harm.
Mishal Husain: Do you think the United States is doing enough to help the South African transition become a complete transition?
Susan Rice: No, but we're not doing enough in my estimation for Africa as a whole. We talked a bit a little while ago about agricultural subsidies. That's one thing that we and the Europeans have in our power to change in a meaningful fashion, but we can do more on other scores as well. We can open our markets further to goods and services from Africa. This is separate from the agricultural subsidy issue. We have something called the African Growth and Opportunity Act that was signed by President Clinton in 2000. And it's being pursued and implemented by the Bush administration. This allows a substantial number of products to come into the U.S. market without duties and without quotas. But this act is not indefinite. It will expire in the near term. It doesn't cover all products coming from Africa. It certainly doesn't deal with the agricultural issues we described. It doesn't allow textiles to come in from Africa, which is a potential engine of significant growth because our own textile industry has made Congress averse to opening up on that score. So there's more we can do on trade. We could do more by virtue of government policy to encourage investment in Africa. I participated on a commission, a bipartisan commission of Democrats, Republicans, private sector people, former government officials, that has made a set of recommendations to congress and to the administration about how we can do more to increase capital flows to Africa. One thing we could do is provide in our tax code greater incentives for U.S. investors to go to places like Africa and particularly -- since we're talking about South Africa -- to South Africa as well. This will help create jobs. And we can do it in a way that is supportive of the black economic empowerment agenda because it doesn't do good simply to increase the concentration of wealth in the hands of the white minority. It has to be spread out for it to be sustainable.
Mishal Husain: There's no doubt that this is such a difficult one to push through the black empowerment strategy and still not frighten away foreign investors because all evidence says that the minute the government said such and such industry should be one that's controlled eventually by black South Africans. Immediately, there's this sort of flight from that industry and the market.
Susan Rice: Well, the government has had a couple of instances where it tested the waters and found that a more dramatic or radical approach would have a very negative reaction from potential investors, domestic and foreign, and has sort of stepped back. But I think, in the main, the government of South Africa has been very careful to try to pursue black economic empowerment -- as ambitious and aggressive a strategy as it is -- in a fashion that minimizes the risk of frightening off investors. And as we said at the outset, it's a very delicate balancing act. But I think, for the most part, they're managing that balance effectively.
|
