The bow-tie wearing US ambassador to SA, Reuben Brigety, recently announced that Washington would not interfere in the May 29 SA elections: a curious statement, especially given that his country intervened, mostly covertly, in 81 elections about the globe between 1946 and 2000.

Brigety himself intervened negatively in SA’s foreign policy last May, when he alleged that Pretoria had sent arms to Russia through its Lady R vessel, insisting that: “We are confident that weapons were loaded onto that vessel, and I would bet my life on the accuracy of that assertion.”

After this unhinged outburst of a US diplomatic bull in a China shop, international relations, and co-operation minister Naledi Pandor summoned the pompous plenipotentiary to the OR Tambo building for an upbraiding during which SA diplomats reported that Brigety had apologised for his tirade. Brigety himself rather inelegantly explained that he had corrected “any misimpressions”.

After this undiplomatic and still unproven allegation, the ANC, the SACP and the EFF called for the diplomat’s expulsion from SA. President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered an independent investigation, which found no evidence of any arms having been shipped to Russia from SA, and noted that only military equipment from the United Arab Emirates had been delivered to the SA National Defence Force (SANDF).

After Brigety’s claim, the rand plummeted 4.6% to a three-year low, and several US legislators pushed for Pretoria’s exclusion from Washington’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which provides 32 African countries with preferential trade access. SA was also rendered vulnerable to European sanctions. Rather than fostering sound bilateral ties, Brigety had instead taken a wrecking ball to this important relationship, ensuring in the process that he would become a lame duck, distrusted by his hosts, and thus hobbling his ability to do his job effectively.

Despite pro-US journalist Peter Fabricius claiming that Brigety was likely to be speaking with official backing, Politico’s Nahal Toosi cited several US officials confirming the infuriation of the Biden administration at this unauthorised statement that had clearly overstated the country’s intelligence information.

This incident would turn out to be Brigety’s “Powell moment”: in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Jamaican-American Secretary of State Colin Powell had presented flawed intelligence on nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the UN Security Council. He thus — by his own admission — permanently “blotted” his record. During this cause célèbre, US intelligence — on which Brigety had also based his claims — notoriously turned out to be an oxymoron.

Brigety had earlier courted controversy when he described US President Donald Trump in a 2017 foreign policy article, as “America’s first Nazi-in-chief” (and an “unreconstructed racist”), before explaining at his Senate confirmation hearings for the SA ambassadorial post that he had apologised for this remark at the time because he felt it “was beneath the dignity of the office and beneath my long-established standards for dignity and decency”. This former naval officer then jingoistically, in the same 2017 essay, described the US armed forces as “the greatest military the world has ever known”.

African-American Brigety represents a phenomenon that has been little discussed in African circles: using a false diasporic solidarity with the continent to champion harmful, nakedly pro-US interests in Africa. The first African-American US president, Barack Obama, massively militarised US Africa policy, establishing military and drone bases across the continent. Other black US officials such as Susan Rice, Jendayi Frazer and Johnny Carson have used a false racial solidarity to further personal careers and sometimes feather personal nests through lucrative post-diplomatic consultancies laundering the image of African autocrats.   

Having bet his life on proving SA had sent arms to Russia, surely Brigety should have committed diplomatic hara-kiri (ritual suicide) by falling on his sword to save his honour?

Professor Adekeye Adebajo is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.

The article was first published by Business Day South Africa on 27 May 2024.