Roelf Meyer can help save SA‑US ties

It has become fashionable, from both right and left, to disparage those politicians from the National Party and the ANC, who came together in the turbulent ’90s to chart a way to end apartheid and birth democracy in South Africa.

Right-wingers who wanted their own secessionist “Volkstaat” – many of whom still yearn deeply for it today – believe white people, and particularly Afrikaners, were “sold down the river” by the Nats.

They accuse those negotiators from the existing order of throwing the country to the “communist” wolves of the ANC. Look at where we are now, they say, as proof.

On the left – and particularly among young black people who like to regard themselves as “revolutionary”, the same “sell-out” terminology appears when referring not only to 1994, but even to figures as iconic as Nelson Mandela.

Their argument goes that the ANC gave the country to the wolves of White Monopoly Capital. Look at where we are now, they say, as proof.

The appointment of Roelf Meyer as South Africa’s new ambassador to the US has, ironically, brought those bitter extremists together in condemnation.

The reality is plain to any honest person who understands history and, more so, to those who were actually there and witnessed how close this country came to being consumed by what would have been a disastrous civil war.

People like Meyer and President Cyril Ramaphosa were well aware of that danger and worked together to compromise for peace.

The fact that Meyer, apart from being an affable person, is a man moulded by give and take – and the critical ability to listen to all sides of an argument – makes him an excellent choice as “Our Man in Washington”.

He helped pull a country back from a precipice, so perhaps he can do the same for SA-US relations.

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