Private sector must stand up and be counted in SA's HIV/AIDS fight

Their contribution to the country's HIV response has been a paltry 2%

- MUSHTAK PARKER

IT IS often said that politics is the art of the possible. What is certain though, policies like night follows day are consequential. Whether their impact is beneficial, punitive or ineffectual depends on the quality, processing and delivery of the policy decisions, especially when it involves the world's richest and largest economies driven essentially by competing economic orthodoxies veiling as protectionism of prevailing domination towards hegemony.

For resource rich countries from the Global South this is the ultimate nightmare. Disruption to the prevailing rules-based global order which has led to momentary fragmentation and governments clamouring for unity but in reality, scurrying for preferred status treatment, has left the global economic, financial, health and social landscape in tatters.

At a time when the diplomatic jousting between South Africa and the US continues unabated in the wake of the latest "reciprocal tariffs" imposed by the Trump administration starting on August 1, including a 30% tariff on South African exports to the US with the threat of a further 10% on BRICS nations for their "anti-American policies", there are clear signs that bilateral relations between the two "partners" have reached a nadir, from which any future rapprochement will take years to repair.

The latest tactic used by Washington is the diplomatic isolation of Pretoria not by withdrawing missions but through the boycotting and therefore undermining of the South African Presidency of the 2025 G20.