Tony Leon’s track record dispels DA’s narrative of “skilled diplomat”

Ali Ridha Khan

THE DA frames former party leader Tony Leon as a “skilled diplomat” fit to represent South Africa in Washington. But this glowing portrayal wilfully ignores Leon’s political history and its entanglement with apartheid’s legacy, neoliberal dogma, and racial hierarchies. Far from being a neutral statesman, Leon built his career as an opposition politician who courted white fears and capitalist interests. 

In the late 1990s, his DA (then Democratic Party) campaigned under the slogan “Fight Back”, a barely veiled dog-whistle widely heard as “fight black” – an appeal to those anxious about black majority rule​. Leon even struck alliances with remnants of the apartheid regime (merging with the National Party’s successors) in a quest for power​. Calling him meritorious glosses over how he leveraged racial anxieties and protected privilege.

Leon’s track record hardly embodies high-minded diplomacy. Decades ago, he penned articles praising the apartheid military – describing the South African Defense Force’s brutal 1970s invasion of Angola as “one of many splendored tasks of the army”​.

He even called an apartheid detention center “strictly regulated and humane”​, despite it being a site of torture and abuse. These are uncomfortable truths beneath the veneer of a “seasoned diplomat.” His tenure as ambassador to Argentina (a post granted in a gesture of political co-option by the ANC) is cited as proof of his diplomatic prowess. 

Yet even that appointment was less about extraordinary skill than about elite back-scratching – the ANC-led government extending an olive branch to a vocal opponent by giving him a cushy posting​. 

It’s a reminder that in post-apartheid South Africa, yesterday’s adversaries often find common cause at the top. Calling Leon uniquely qualified ignores how his politics aligned neatly with what Washington elites prefer: a pro-West, pro-market figure who won’t rock the boat. Indeed, Leon has openly criticised South Africa’s own foreign policy for being too “antagonistic” to Western allies – chiding Pretoria’s stance against Israel and its ties with Iran​. Is it any surprise the DA touts him as the perfect envoy to the United States?

His “skill” lies largely in catering to the sensibilities of the powerful, not in advancing any transformative agenda for the powerless.

By proposing Leon, the DA claims to champion meritocracy and good governance – insinuating that unlike the ANC, they appoint based on competence, not cadre loyalty. But merit according to whom? The DA’s meritocratic posturing often masks a commitment to maintaining a status quo of privilege. Leon’s career epitomises this: his policies and rhetoric rarely challenged the structural inequalities born of colonialism and apartheid. 

Under his leadership, the party fiercely opposed remedial reforms like affirmative action – denouncing the 1998 Employment Equity Bill as “pernicious…social engineering.” In practice, “merit” was defined in a way that upheld white advantage in the job market. The DA’s governance record, especially in the Western Cape, is often praised for efficiency, yet the province remains one of the most unequal, with townships and luxury estates separated by invisible walls of spatial and economic apartheid. 

South Africa’s Gini coefficient hovers around 0.63 – one of the highest inequality rates in the world. What has the DA tangibly done to upend this injustice? Their policies hew to market fundamentalism, insisting that free enterprise alone will uplift the poor​. In reality, this neoliberal gospel has meant social services cutbacks, reluctance toward wealth redistribution, and blaming the victims of poverty for their plight.

Invoking “good governance,” the DA loves to lambast ANC corruption and mismanagement – a valid critique – but good governance is not only about clean audits and investor confidence. It’s also about uprooting systemic oppression. On that front, the DA has been largely silent or complicit. 

Leon and his party never fundamentally challenged the post-1994 economic order that left land, capital and power largely in the same hands as before. Instead, Leon infamously crowed that the ANC’s adoption of neoliberal policies in the late 1990s meant “we have won the policy argument” – illustrating the DA’s convergence with the ruling party on entrenching a market-led, elite-friendly framework. The DA’s notion of merit conveniently aligns with existing power: English-speaking, business-approved, Western-educated elites like Leon sail through as “competent,” while grassroots voices are dismissed as “populist.” This is a meritocracy of the elite, not a genuine egalitarian vision.

The push to send Tony Leon to the US must be seen in the light of a common practice: using diplomatic appointments to whitewash reputations and reward loyal servants of the establishment. Throughout the world (and certainly in South Africa), ambassadorships in glittering capitals are the retirement gold-watch for political elites.

For Leon, a posting to Washington would cap his career with a statesmanlike halo, conveniently distancing him from the more unsavory aspects of his legacy. It’s a form of rebranding: from opposition firebrand who pandered to apartheid nostalgia into a grandfatherly diplomat shaking hands in DC cocktail parties. Such appointments often do little to advance the interests of the people back home; they’re about networking among elites and reinforcing alliances within the imperial core.

In Washington, an ambassador like Leon would not be expected to challenge US hegemony or speak uncomfortable truths about global inequality. Quite the opposite – his role would be to mollify Washington’s power-brokers, assure them that South Africa remains friendly to Western capital and geopolitical interests. This might include soft-pedaling South Africa’s support for Palestinian rights or pan-African unity in favor of toeing the US line – exactly as Leon himself has advocated​. 

The beneficiaries of this diplomacy are elite interests on both sides: American policymakers get a congenial partner who won’t question the neoliberal consensus, and South Africa’s rulers get a direct line to Washington’s halls of power. Ordinary South Africans, especially the black and poor majority, are nowhere in this equation.

For them, the daily struggles – poverty, joblessness, landlessness – won’t be alleviated by having Tony Leon chat up U.S. senators. But Leon’s image will be burnished, and the DA can bask in the pride of having one of their own in the court of the empire. The whole spectacle is political theatre, a far cry from the revolutionary diplomacy that anti-imperialists (from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela in his early years) envisioned – diplomacy that would center justice, not just polite business as usual.

 Khan is a fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.