Leon’s track record dispels DA’s narrative of ‘skilled diplomat’

His ‘skill’ lies largely in catering to the sensibilities of the powerful

- ALI RIDHA KHAN

THE DA frames former party leader Tony Leon as a “skilled diplomat” fit to represent South Africa in Washington.

But this glowing portrayal wilfully ignores Leon's political history and its entanglement with apartheid's legacy, neoliberal dogma, and racial hierarchies. Far from being a neutral statesman, Leon built his career as an opposition politician who courted white fears and capitalist interests.

In the late 1990s, his DA (then Democratic Party) campaigned under the slogan “Fight Back”, a barely veiled dog-whistle widely heard as “fight black” - an appeal to those anxious about black majority rule. Leon even struck alliances with remnants of the apartheid regime (merging with the National Party’s successors) in a quest for power.

Calling him meritorious glosses over how he leveraged racial anxieties and protected privilege.

Leon's track record hardly embodies high-minded diplomacy. Decades ago, he penned articles praising the apartheid military describing the South African Defense Force’s brutal 1970s invasion of Angola as “one of many splendored tasks of the army”.

He even called an apartheid detention centre “strictly regulated and humane”, despite it being a site of torture and abuse. These are uncomfortable truths beneath the veneer of a “seasoned diplomat.” His tenure as ambassador to Argentina (a post granted in a gesture of political co-option by the ANC) is cited as proof of his diplomatic prowess.

Yet even that appointment was less about extraordinary skill than about elite back-scratching the ANC-led government extending an olive branch to a vocal opponent by giving him a cushy posting.