Anyone doubting how game-changing the oil price crash has been should ponder this brilliant piece by independent economist Cees Bruggemans (right). Within days of the new normal for energy prices, Cuba and America announced they’re putting the past behind. As Cees muses, could this have anything to do with the reality that Cuba’s funder, once-oil rich Venezuela, is now so deep in the socialist-inspired hole that it simply cannot keep bailing out the Castro Dream? And what are we to make of the ANC’s Mr Fix-It Cyril Ramaphosa just happening to take his hols in Castroland? Cees at his best. – AH
By Cees Bruggemans
Two news items, I am sure unrelated.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa (and family) last week left on a (Xmas?) holiday in Cuba, using commercial airlines and paying for it himself.
That’s strange. You would think Seychelles or Mauritius would do if you want sea, sun and stuff, even when 62.
And paying himself. What’s this, a morality play (in the Xmas spirit)?
And then nearly simultaneously the other news item: Obama restoring US diplomatic relations with Cuba. Not lifting sanctions or terrorist label. Not recognizing the communist regime. Merely restoring diplomatic relations.
Apparently, something has been brewing here. Bill Clinton shook hands with Raul Castro 15 years ago, an oddity then, but entirely in the Clinton make-up, with nothing serious happening thereafter.
At Mandela’s memorial service last year December Obama also suddenly out of the blue grabbed Raul’s hand, now followed a year later by this bilateral agreement to restore relations.
What happened?
Russia happened, then the oil price collapsed, which in turn has unhinged Venezuela, which has run out of generous subsidy gestures that Cuba has long relied on.
Time to get real? An opportunity recognised by the Obama people and acted upon, even if it will have to be by using Presidential executive powers, as Congressional Republicans come January won’t necessarily go along.
Coincidence? These two news items?
Possibly, in which case Ramaphosa wanted to be on the ground to witness this historic turning of an old ANC ally?
But then private Xmas holidays aren’t usually decided on the spur of the moment, but months in advance. And did Castro or Obama really keep the ANC crew informed? One better, did this recognition idea only get a life as oil plunged, and Venezuela was taken to the brink (circa October?).
Given that we don’t know, less fanciful interpretations offer themselves.
Ramaphosa has heard so much from his new friends in government about Cuba and its purist socialist model that he wanted to investigate first hand? Know your enemy and all that?
The beaches are great, the food passable, they say about this communist paradise. Why not a couple of birds with one stone?
Have a holiday, be seen to do penance by making a pilgrimage to the holies of ANC holies, a sob to the lefty idealists while getting to know the consequences of their ravings a little better. And win honourable mention in the dispatches by paying for it yourself, instead of taking a retinue of 100 to New York first class all the way on governments expense.
It’s like a biblical gesture, cloth & ass, also fitting nicely with the Xmas theme. Who are the public relations people again Cyril is now using? Not missing a trick in the good book.
But how great the surprise must have been when landing in Havana to find out the Americans had landed a hour before him.
That’s like visiting Berlin in November 1989 in that crucial 24 hours, or me climbing on a plane for London in mid-1985 and finding on arrival SA had defaulted on its government debt (and did I have any comment….).
But how great the luck to be there and witness a transition in motion. The denials as to what it means, the inevitableness of change, the things to do, the things to avoid like the plague.
A better opportunity could not have been invented for our Number One problem identifier and President to be to do some serious fact finding and soul searching while on the beach, and contemplating America as your next best friend.
Perish the thought….
But then stranger things have happened in recent decades.
* Cees Bruggemans is the consulting economist at Bruggemans & Associates. His website is at www.bruggemans.co.za and email [email protected]
