If you want to gauge where we stand in President Donald Trump’s universe, it’s written large in his choice of the new US ambassador to this country. Lana Marks, a Florida handbag designer.
That the position has been vacant for two years is another telling indication of the lack of importance Trump attaches to one of Africa’s most powerful nations. That the mission has been headed in the interim by a mere Chargé d’Affaires (CDA) is another.
In the US diplomatic hierarchy, an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary is the foreign service equivalent of a four-star general.
A Chargé d’Affaires? Not so much. The literal translation from French is “the person in charge of business matters”. Think of the CDA as the flunky who keeps the four-star general’s tent looking spick and span while they are out conquering the world.
For the past two years to have an interim, nogal, CDA running the US mission in South Africa - housed in that hideously ugly concrete bunker, apparently spirited directly from the blasted heath of a World War I battlefield into the bucolic Pretoria suburb of Arcadia - speaks volumes. It’s about as big a statement of the host country’s insignificance as is possible, aside from not having any diplomatic relations at all.
Marks is a diplomatic neophyte. Her experience in this arena is limited to talking nicely with her fellow social butterflies over canapés at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where she is a member.
This is not to be sneered at. The Foreign Service Institute at Arlington might be the training ground of conventional diplomats, but to catch Trump’s eye it is a better investment to pay the $100000 (R1.3 million) a year in fees that Mar-a-Lago costs.
Trump’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic is a member. Two other members were nominated as ambassadors to Austria and Ireland, but declined.
While it’s true that the previous US ambassador to Pretoria, Patrick Gaspard, was also not a career diplomat, there the comparison ends. He had a lifetime of experience as a union and political organiser, as well as a long stint in the White House during former president Barack Obama’s first term.
They do, however, share one thing: both are US immigrants. Gaspard was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo - a failing state that truly qualifies to be one of Trump’s despised “sh**holes of Africa” - while she was born in the Eastern Cape and says she attended “very fine” schools.
To be a successful purveyor of luxury goods is an admirable achievement. But it is not an occupation usually associated with an interest in or knowledge of a political world.
From the interviews, Marks comes across as a preening but slightly insecure snob. In Business Day, she burbles about living in the “most exclusive part of the US The crème de la crème of the world lives there”.
Marks claims also to have played at Wimbledon, the French and the South African Opens. Upon my enquiry, Wimbledon reported they could find no record of her.
One of her great strengths, she says, is her good taste. Her greatest achievement is the $400000 Lana Marks Cleopatra Clutch, a dyed crocodile skin and diamond encrusted handbag, “inspired by Elizabeth Taylor” and which is “seen on the red carpet more than any other”.
Ambassadorial appointments, even when dished out as presidential rewards to cronies, have symbolic significance. South Africa has had a long and intimate, albeit sometimes fractious, diplomatic history with the US.
The Marks appointment is simply a measure of Trump’s narrow focus. His greatest post-1945 ally, Europe, doesn’t much feature in his world view. Why would we?
It could, of course, be that she got the job not because she wines and dines with the Trumpians. She got it because she was the only one in the Mar-a-Lago Diplomatic Academy who could find South Africa on the map.
It’s that bottom bit sticking into the ocean, pointing towards that big ice blob. Right next to Trump’s favourite African country, Nambia.
Follow WSM on Twitter @TheJaundiced Eye
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