8chan/8kun QResearch SOUTH AFRICA Posts (1)
#19335729 at 2023-08-10 21:12:13 (UTC+1)
Q Research South Africa #11: Diamonds, Gold, and War Edition
>>19335719
>"After President Ramaphosa's administration took over in 2018, we started to assist bringing private sector and government closer to each other on the sectoral basis. So that it keeping me busy as well."
"Roelf Meyer is back - and trying to help save SA's economy" - Part 1
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-01-30-roelf-meyer-is-back-and-trying-to-help-save-sas-economy/
30 Jan 2019
Roelf Meyer became one of the best-known faces in South Africa during the transition to democracy when he led negotiations on behalf of the National Party with the ANC's chief mediator, Cyril Ramaphosa. It's 20 years since he left active politics to play a behind-the-scenes role in global conflict resolution. But Meyer is now working with the South African government once more: this time, to help jumpstart the economy.
Roelf Meyer was in Zimbabwe when Daily Maverick spoke to him on Wednesday, 30 January.
Of course he was: if a country is wracked by civil strife, chances are good you'll find Meyer working unobtrusively behind the scenes to try to find a resolution.
The 71-year-old has parlayed his negotiating role in the South African transition to democracy into an international career in conflict mediation. Meyer describes his organisation, the In Transformation Initiative, as being "quite involved in a number of countries in giving advice in resolving challenges".
The challenges in question involve some of the world's stickiest geopolitical issues. Take Myanmar, for instance.
"I am involved there," says Meyer, and chuckles ruefully. "That's one of my headaches."
He is working in an "advisory capacity" with the government of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has faced growing international condemnation for maintaining a repressive regime and failing to act amidst a brutal military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.
Meyer has said very little in public about his work in Myanmar. A The Guardian report in November 2018 described Meyer as being one of the "few figures" who still had the ear of Suu Kyi.
"I do have access to her," Meyer acknowledges to Daily Maverick. "Whether she is always listening to me is a different question - and she doesn't have to."
He says the situation on the ground in Myanmar is "much more complicated" than is generally portrayed in the media.
"It's not just the Rohingya problem. There are at least 15 armed ethnic groups in the country that all have to be attended to in terms of finding solutions."
Of all Meyer's current projects, however, the one he describes himself as most excited about is playing out on home soil. On Tuesday, 29 January, President Cyril Ramaphosa attended a Business Economic Indaba organised by Business Unity South Africa, at which the Public Private Growth Initiative (PPGI) laid out for Ramaphosa its plans regarding the ways in which South Africa's private and public sectors could work together to combat unemployment and galvanise the economy.
The PPGI is the brainchild of Meyer and his friend Johan van Zyl, the CEO of Toyota Europe and Africa.
The way Meyer tells it, it was Ramaphosa's inaugural State of the Nation Address that sparked the concept for the PPGI. In particular, it was the president's rallying call to the South African public, Thuma Mina - send me - that did the inspirational trick.