By Fiona Wakelin
DIRCO’s diplomatic mandate, through which SA’s national interest is pursued, is done through embassies which are situated in three regions:
Africa - responsible for all bilateral relations in the African continent Asia and Middle East Europe and the Americas
The Global Governance branch deals with key multilateral institutions such as the UN and its organisations, the African Union and other related bodies.
Each embassy abroad, which includes the Ambassador and his/her team from DIRCO and other departments like Trade, Industry and Competition, Defence and Agriculture manage their work through annual plans and strategies that are crafted with their relevant branch managers in HQ. This includes providing basic services like providing ID, birth documents and passports to South Africans abroad, including visiting those in jail and providing visas to South African visitors.
As the Deputy Director General I’m therefore responsible for the branch which includes all sub regions within the Americas and Europe, overseeing the management of each embassy by the responsible Chief Director and his/her team. The work includes ensuring that relations are strengthened with each country to the extent that SA’s national interests are attended to in a way that leads to concrete outcomes, as much as possible. My job also involves supporting the principals i.e. the DG, Ministers and the President in engaging with these regions in a way which confirms SA’s appreciation and support for what the officials in HQ and in embassies are doing. The main objective is always to evaluate if sectoral action plans have been implemented by the officials.
The DDG also ensures that regular communication is undertaken to discuss political issues, as well as seeking strong collaboration in multilateral engagements to support each other’s interests, such as getting a citizen to be appointed to a particular body like a UN organisation. This is crucial as such decisions are taken through voting and discussions are based on reciprocal commitments. In HQ engagements also include discussions about visas and how South Africans may have been treated in some cases. To make all this manageable, structured mechanisms are put in place which outline how regular meetings should take place, and at what level, and ensure that where Agreements have been reached on specific sectoral projects and the related action plans, that the meetings by Principals serve to evaluate and monitor progress and also reflect on new opportunities. Countries take turns to host such meetings and DIRCO facilitates the processes from the beginning to the end. Currently there are about 91 countries that are served by the Americas and Europe branches and all need attention in some form or the other.
The Diplomatic Academy is responsible for training all officials before they are posted, from junior officials up to senior personnel which could include former DGs and Ministers. The training is for both corporate services (immigration, civil, finance and HR services) administration of the embassy and the political and economic diplomatic work. The Academy offers accredited courses by the PSeta and is also ISO certified. The main challenge is that the environment which officials are being trained for, is not only complex (involving foreign cultures, language and laws) bit it’s also very fluid and the Academy needs to have the capacity to react quickly when new issues arise e.g. climate change, technology advancement and cyber security, emergence of different kinds of conflict.
My job is to guide, highlight new issues, seek international and domestic partners to work with, for success. The main objective is to ensure that training is regarded as an investment which ensures that ambitious goals are achieved because diplomacy depends on human relations and some regard it as a special craft.