THE FUSE

Roelf Meyer arrived in Washington, DC, on Friday, 24 July, eager to deploy his considerable negotiation skills to tackle the challenging task of repairing South Africa’s damaged relations with the US. He is encouraged by what he detected on a “scoping exercise” to the US capital late last year “that we still have a lot of friends in America, on both sides of the house, Republicans as well as Democrats”. And, he says, we must use “the opportunity to reach out to acquaint people with South Africa again”.