There is something faintly comic about the latest South Africa-US diplomatic quarrel. Ronald Lamola says American ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III should “get out of the kitchen” if he is tired of talking. Bozell replies that Lamola is insulting him, which will presumably provoke another démarche accusing Bozell of being undiplomatic for complaining about being called undiplomatic. At this rate, the department of international relations & co-operation may need a dedicated Department of Démarches, preferably with its own stationery. They are both arguing about etiquette while standing on a floor full of broken crockery.
Yet underneath the crockery there are serious questions, and inconveniently both men have a point. Bozell is surely entitled to ask why South African political leaders continue to tolerate the singing of Kill the Boer. The courts have ruled that Dubul’ ibhunu, understood in its historical and political context, does not amount to unlawful hate speech. The Supreme Court of Appeal upheld that position. Fine. But courts determine what may legally be said, not what politicians would be wise to sing while holding microphones.
This distinction has somehow disappeared. You can believe the courts reached the correct constitutional conclusion and still think Kill the Boer is a ghastly thing to sing in modern South Africa. Freedom of expression includes the freedom to say stupid things; it does not oblige the rest of us to provide the backing vocals.
In fact President Cyril Ramaphosa came remarkably close to saying exactly this last week. “We must guard against words and actions that polarise communities, inflame public opinion and reopen the wounds of our past,” he wrote. Quite so. The awkward question is why this admirable principle should apply everywhere except within earshot of an EFF rally. Ramaphosa could end much of the argument with one sentence: the song is legal, historically explicable and politically unhelpful. Constitutions protect lots of things presidents are not required to applaud.
Where Washington goes badly wrong is in trying to turn this perfectly reasonable objection into evidence of something much larger: the extraordinary Trump administration contention that white South Africans face genocide. One does not follow from the other. A political chant can be inflammatory without being an instruction manual for genocide, just as a football crowd shouting “Kill the referee” is generally expressing dissatisfaction rather than announcing an assassination plot. The US makes its strongest argument much weaker by hitching it to its weakest one.
Lamola, meanwhile, has firmer ground than his kitchen metaphor suggests when he objects to ambassadors intervening in domestic politics. Article 41 of the Vienna Convention actually says diplomats have a duty “not to interfere in the internal affairs” of their host country. So this is not some ANC doctrine discovered between cabinet meetings. Ambassadors are guests, albeit guests with flags on their cars and unusually elaborate dinner parties.
But Lamola stretches the principle too far if he means ambassadors cannot criticise domestic policy. Of course they can. Diplomats routinely argue about tariffs, investment rules, human rights, sanctions and legislation affecting their countries. An ambassador unable to comment on domestic policy would be approximately as useful as a weather forecaster forbidden to mention rain. The real question is where diplomatic advocacy ends and domestic political participation begins.
Bozell has plainly been pushing at that boundary. Pretoria’s latest protest followed his public criticism of government policy, his meeting with AfriForum and his declaration that Washington was “tired of the many discussions” and running out of patience. Meeting AfriForum is hardly a diplomatic crime; ambassadors meet opposition parties and civil society all the time. But repeatedly joining one side of South Africa’s internal political arguments inevitably makes an ambassador look less like an envoy and more like a well-protected talk radio caller.
There is another complication. Bozell does not represent Bozell. He represents the US. If Washington dislikes BEE, land policy or the government’s response to Kill the Boer, conveying those objections is literally his job. Pretoria can tell America to mind its own business, but America is equally entitled to decide what constitutes its business. Sovereignty means South Africa writes South African laws; it does not mean foreigners must find them charming.
Which leaves Lamola’s “get out of the kitchen” line. It is funny, but foreign ministers probably shouldn’t aspire to be funny quite so often. Their job is to reduce friction, not audition for the parliamentary roast. Equally, Bozell declaring that the time for discussion is running out is an odd pose for a diplomat. Diplomacy without talking is rather like journalism without complaining about deadlines.
The sensible position lies inconveniently between the barricades. Kill the Boer can be legal and still deserve condemnation. Farm murders can be horrific without constituting genocide. American ambassadors can criticise South African policy without becoming participants in South African politics. And South African ministers can defend sovereignty without treating every disagreement as an invasion.
What is missing, in other words, is not principle but proportion. Everyone has climbed up a hill and announced an intention to die on it. The tragedy is that these hills aren’t even very high.
