South Africa and the U.S. Common Challenges, Common Goals

U.S. Consul General Erica Barks-Ruggles (right) in discussion with student from Stellenbosch University

Cape Town, January 24, 2011 - “What unites us is so much more important than what divides us,” Cape Town Consul General Erica Barks-Ruggles said in remarks to the South African Institute of International Affairs, “On issue after issue our goals are the same.“

In education, health care, job creation and in the international arena, South Africa and the United States face similar challenges.  Both countries, she said, are “vibrant, diverse, multi-cultural and multi-racial democracies.  We both have a history of struggle for social justice.  And in both countries our diversity is our greatest strength.”

Barks-Ruggles pointed out that the U.S. and South Africa have forged a very effective partnership to combat HIV/AIDS under the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR).  “Did you know,” she asked, “that the United States has spent over R24 billion over the last eight years working with South Africa to comb at HIV/AIDS in this country?”  The amount, she said, is the “single largest expenditure on health care by any one country for the benefit of any one country in history.”

She pointed to similar cooperation and mutually beneficial exchange in education.  “Dozens of South African scholars have taught in U.S. universities under our Fulbright program,” Barks-Ruggles pointed out, “and dozens of Americans have taught” in South Africa.  Over 8000 U.S. universities students have studied in South Africa over the last two years, she said, and since 1994 between 1500 and 2000 South African students each year have enrolled in U.S. universities.

Barks-Ruggles also pointed to cooperation in the international arena, citing the example of Sudan.  She praised South African initiatives, including the efforts of former President Thabo Mbeki, and called for urgent and coordinated international action to ensure that the Sudanese government permits humanitarian access to hundreds of thousands of Sudanese now facing an imminent threat of famine.   “There is real urgency to the situation,” she said.  “The international community cannot possibly stand by as hundreds of thousands of Africans are dying . . . and we don’t find a way to get emergency aid to them."

Read full text of remarks here.