A day late and a dollar short in AGOA debacle

17 June 2015

Note to Editors: The following speech was delivered in Parliament today by the DA’s Shadow Minister of Trade and Industry, Geordin Hill-Lewis MP, in reply to a ministerial statement on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Speaker, 

Listening to the Minister’s statement, I was reminded of Helen Suzman’s famous quip decades ago that it was not her questions that embarrassed South Africa, but the government’s answers. 

The story we heard today was pure revisionism. 

The implications of losing AGOA access are dire - R25 billion in annual exports to America in some of our biggest export industries would be put at risk, and undoubtedly tens of thousands of jobs would be lost. 

This House has known for the better part of two years that South Africa’s continued inclusion in AGOA was under threat because of a trade dispute in the poultry industry. 

For most of those two years the Minister and the Department of Trade and Industry did not pay nearly adequate attention to the growing crisis. 

In late 2013, the Minister told the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry he was confident of our inclusion because President Obama supported it, as if the White House could dictate to Congress like Luthuli House dictates to MPs here. 

When more than 200 chief executives of American companies wrote to Congress about their concerns over our economic policies, and asked them to exclude us, still there was no sense of urgency from the DTI. 

After President Zuma and Minister Davies went to the AGOA Summit in Washington DC, Members of Congress and Senators complained that they waited months to receive answers to their letters. 

Most importantly, up until the last minute, the very 11th hour, the DTI allowed a private industry body - the South African Poultry Association - representing the biggest and most entrenched interests, to negotiate the trade policy of this government. 

The Minister speaks today of the threats on South Africa’s policy sovereignty, but he abdicated our country’s policy sovereignty to one industry body. 

And just weeks ago, President Zuma answered an oral question from me in this House which made it very clear that he was inexcusably uninformed about the extent of the crisis. 

I will not say that he misled this House, because I genuinely believe he was not adequately briefed by his trade minister. 

So for nearly two years the government dithered and hesitated while the crisis mounted, and then finally, only after 13 US Senators signed a letter to President Zuma objecting to the government’s conduct, did the Minister dispatch South Africa’s most seasoned trade negotiator, Ambassador Faizel Ismael, to take over the negotiations. 

His efforts must be applauded from all sides of this House, and I thank him for an exceptional job done. 

But the truth is that over the course of two years, we have been such poor negotiating partners, that it may be too little too late. 

We have behaved in such a way that one would swear there was no obvious and massive national interest in maintaining our preferential access to the world’s biggest economy. 

Let me be clear, we sincerely hope that South Africa will not be excluded from AGOA after the so-called “out of cycle review”.

But if we are excluded, then it will only be the result of the negligent and incompetent handling of the issue by this government. 

All of the terrible consequences for our economy, all of the job losses, all of the families of the auto workers, the textile workers, the agriculture workers, all of the unemployed — they will have only the Minister and the ANC government to blame.  

Last Thursday the US House of Representatives passed the AGOA Extension Bill that will soon go to the White House for signature. We are the only country specifically named in the text of the Bill, and the concerns it raises about this government’s economic policy are numerous, and valid. 

Consider the text of the Bill - it says the out-of-cycle-review must consider South Africa’s “progress toward establishing”, and I quote from Section 104(a) of the Bill 

“…a market-based economy that protects private property rights … and minimizes government interference in the economy through measures such as price controls… 

…the rule of law…and equal protection under the law;

…the protection of intellectual property; 

…a system to combat corruption and bribery,

And our cooperation “…in international efforts to eliminate human rights violations”

How do we fare on that measurement: 

The Private Security Industry Regulation Bill, the deceivingly named Protection and Promotion of Investment Bill, the Expropriation Bill, the Development of Agricultural Land Bill, all examples of government legislation that collectively constitute an assault on private property rights. 

The MPRDA attempts to introduce price controls on minerals. There’s the proposed ban on the export of scrap metal. 

The President undermines the rule of law by browbeating the institutions of the criminal justice system to avoid any and all accountability for his own conduct.

The government now frequently just ignores court orders, and as for combatting corruption and bribery - well, one word, Nkandla. 

The proposed intellectual property policy, soon to be a Bill we are told, raises fundamental concerns about our respect for the intellectual property of foreign innovators. 

And lastly, we do not co-operate in international efforts to eliminate human rights violations. In fact, we actively aid and abet thugs, dictators, murderers and despots. 

You welcome Robert Mugabe here for a state visit, and to your eternal shame, you let Omar Al Bashir escape, quite possibly with your help. You cozy up to Putin, you send ANC study tours to Beijing, you worship Castro. 

Wherever people are not free, there is a friend of the ANC. 

No, Honourable Members, it is clear — if we are reviewed, we will fail that review, and we will be cut off. 

And when that happens this sorry story will just be the latest and perhaps most egregious example in the ANC’s growing record of neglect and incompetence in economic policy. 

Most South Africans have never heard of AGOA, but it daily touches their lives. 

When it is gone, they will look at you - and you will not be able to blame America, for it is not their questions which embarrass South Africa, it is this government’s answers. 

Issued by the DA, June 17 2015