Delicately poised between Brexit and Brics, the European Union (EU), still South Africa’s largest trading partner, believes it continues to offer the best deal for this country.

That was one underlying theme of a unique initiative between the EU’s two major powers, Germany and France, in South Africa last week.

On Wednesday, 22 January 2020, the German and French ambassadors in South Africa swapped jobs for a day. Germany’s Martin Schaefer and France’s Aurélien Lechevallier both crossed Francis Ribeiro Avenue in Brooklyn, Pretoria to each other’s embassies on the other side and took over each other’s staff, duties, official vehicles, residences and policies.  

This manoeuvre prompted much mirth, of course. Lechevallier said it had been, “a strange and beautiful experience to feel the power of being the German ambassador”. He told guests at a lunch on the day of the swap, which he hosted at the official German residence in Waterkloof,  that he had already made several changes to German policy, which would surprise Schaefer when he returned to his office the next day.  

Schaefer returned the back-handed compliment by saying that as a “humble” German ambassador, he had been surprised that all the staff at the French embassy addressed him as “Monsieur l’ambassadeur”, a formality he was not used to in his own embassy. 

Lechevallier said they had officially informed the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of the swap just in case Pretoria decided to do something drastic like making a démarche (summoning an ambassador to be officially dressed down for some diplomatic offence), on that day.

Schaefer, though, suggested that he had done the swap just so that Lechevallier would be in the hot seat when the SA government mounted such a “démarche” on the German ambassador to protest some of his recent writings. (Schaefer regularly writes op-eds in the South African media about diplomatic and other issues, some of them quite frank.)

Such banter aside, the ambassador swap had serious purpose. The main one was to mark the 57th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty of friendship which French President Charles de Gaulle and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed on 22 January 1963 in the French presidential palace, the Elysée. The treaty committed both sides to closer and deeper ties. The irascible De Gaulle very soon got grumpy because West Germany later added a preamble stressing its close ties to the US, which De Gaulle resented. 

But the Elysée Treaty survived De Gaulle’s haughty displeasure and, as Schaefer and Lechevallier pointed out on Wednesday, the current German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, who are much friendlier than De Gaulle and Adenauer were, signed a renewal of the treaty on its 56th anniversary on 22 January 2029 in Aachen, a German city close to the French border. 

As Schaefer remarked to journalists over breakfast in the French ambassador’s residence in Arcadia, the Elysée treaty symbolically marked the end of over a century-and-a-half of bitter and bloody warfare between the two countries; from Napoleon’s occupation of Germany during his march across Europe in the early 19th Century; Germany’s revenge in the 1871 war when it invaded France and annexed its province of Alsace-Lorraine; France’s defeat of Germany in World War 1; Hitler’s invasion of France in 1940 – when he was photographed gloating in front of the Eiffel Tower – and then finally his defeat by Allied forces, including France, in 1945. 

 “Standing over the graves and ashes of the millions of young men and women killed in World War II,” De Gaulle and Adenauer had decided their countries should never fight another war, Schaefer said. Credit was particularly due to France for the greatness it showed in forgiving Germany for all it had done in World War II.  The decision to end all wars between them had been the genesis of the strong friendship between Europe’s two biggest powers, which had also become the core of the European Union (itself founded largely to avoid another European war). 

“Without our reconciliation, there would be no European Union,” said Schaefer. “We are rightly called the motor of European integration. Because of the reconciliation … the European Union is the most wonderful, peaceful place, the best place in the world to live.” And Germany and France were continuing to cooperate to keep Europe and the world peaceful, Schaefer said, citing their joint effort to mediate an accord between Russia and Ukraine in 2014, which prevented war erupting again in Europe. And also their collaboration in organising this month’s Berlin summit on Libya. 

“We’ve come a long way for me to be able to represent France and vice versa,” Schaefer said, explaining how he had long considered France as his second home, having studied and worked there for five years. “I never imagined then that I would one day represent the country that is closest to my heart, after Germany.” 

Schaefer and Lechevallier explained that all the embassies of both their countries had been asked to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the signing of the Elysée Treaty in some way. They believed they were the only ones doing so by swapping jobs. “The idea was to send a message of friendship and unity between France and Germany, and also of collaboration with our South African partner, “ Lechevallier said, adding that South Africa was a particularly good place for Germany and South Africa to work together. 

 The swap was especially relevant here because South Africa, like Germany and France, has had to overcome its own long history of resolving conflicts with violence rather than negotiations. Both ambassadors felt that the special friendship which their countries had now achieved after so many decades of enmity, both echoed the South African experience and contained lessons for South Africa. 

“Symbolically, this has a lot to do with South Africa,” Schaefer said.  

Germany and France trusted each other enough to share notes, and met regularly to discuss policy, especially in South Africa as they shared the basic values of democracy and liberalism.

They also had the same interests in South Africa; both wanted it to succeed and to fulfil Mandela and Tutu’s dream of a rainbow nation. Economically, Lechevallier said, both Germany and France were working hard to increase investment in South Africa. They already had many companies in South Africa, investing a lot of skills and money.  Schaefer said, investments from France and Germany were particularly welcome in South Africa because they brought the best technology. 

There was a lot of talk at the moment about South Africa’s new partners, particularly China, he said. But France and Germany remained in the forefront of trade with South Africa. When it came to boosting growth, education and skills, and value-added production, EU investors, and certainly France and Germany, were contributing the most, he said. 

“Our idea is not to make a quick buck and leave, but to fully understand South Africa’s requirements. We stand ready to help.” 

Asked explicitly what he thought about South Africa’s membership of Brics – the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa forum – Schaefer said it had been a “huge success” for South Africa to become a formal member of this large organisation representing the emerging world. At a time when many leaders were abusing their power to dismantle the world order and threaten the peace, which Germany and France had worked so hard to construct, such international co-operation was welcome, he suggested. 

Likewise, Germany and France had every reason to ask South Africa to help them defend the multilateral world order. “Germany will always be a partner to Ramaphosa and we want to be his best partner. We will continue to hold out our hand to South Africa in whichever way possible. But we won’t tell them who their partners should be.” 

He added that Germany and France shared the wish to support Ramaphosa’s “new dawn” and his “credible quest” to return South Africa to a value-based democracy, where the rule of law prevailed, after the 10 years of the previous Zuma administration, which had squandered tax and other resources and which had stuck South Africa’s economic growth at 2012 levels.   

It was coincidental that the ambassador swap was happening on the eve of Brexit (Britain’s exit from the EU this week) – but the “timing falls nicely” as it underscored the value of the EU at the time when Britain was leaving it, a decision he found puzzling. “Why leave the most successful and prosperous community of nations that has ever existed?” Schaefer asked. “Why would you want to face the world alone when you could continue to do so in a community of nations, which shares the same values? The UK has answers to those questions, but I fail to understand. ”

Lechevallier said there was currently a discussion in the EU about its future, including its ties with Africa and the consequences of Brexit. “So we thought right now was the right moment to show the convergence between Germany and France and to show we are together in these troubled times.”

But the remaining 27 EU members would continue exactly as before after Brexit, Schaefer insisted, remaining united and striving to maintain their common values, in the EU and the world, and to continue to play a constructive role with all the EU’s partners, including South Africa. 

He noted the EU-SADC Economic Partnership Agreement – the 2016 free trade deal between the EU, SA, the other four states of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and Mozambique – had been a huge success in boosting South Africa’s trade with Germany and France particularly. It showed too that for France and Germany, and the other EU states “South Africa is not a lemon to squeeze”, as it has promoted balanced trade in which South Africa exported as much as Europe did. DM