Are we supposed to take seriously the international relations chapter of the ANC’s National General Council discussion documents?
I ask this remembering a conversation I had with the great Charlie Rangel, he of the Rangel Amendment which stopped US companies deducting taxes paid to the government of PW Botha from what they owed Uncle Sam.
The congressman from Harlem and I spoke at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta. The platform the party adopted for its presidential nominee Michael Dukakis to run on that year pledged a nigh hermetic embargo of South Africa, well beyond the 1987 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act and Rangel’s own initiative.
“For real?” I asked. He laughed. “Goodness, no! Nobody pays the slightest attention to the platform.” Platforms, he intimated, were things to keep party activists happy and out of the grown-ups’ hair.
Here’s hoping the same is true of the NGC discussion documents, certainly as they relate to foreign policy. Continue reading “Seriously?”