Humorous and
illuminating insights to life as an ambassador of South Africa. (Review by
Michael Green)
Tony Leon, former
Leader of the Opposition in the South African Parliament, recently completed a
three-year term as South Africa’s ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and
Paraguay.
He was based in
Buenos Aires, and this book is a highly entertaining and informative account of
his time in South America. Most people
probably think of an ambassador as being a rather stuffy, wing-collared type of
individual but Tony Leon is a very different proposition. He comes from KZN,
where his father was a Supreme Court judge, and he is a lawyer by training but
his many years in politics, plus his innate vitality, have made him a
cosmopolitan character.
In The Accidental Ambassador, he does not
leak any diplomatic secrets, but he does give many humorous and illuminating
insights into life in Buenos Aires, in South America in general, and in the
embassy in particular.
He was
accompanied by his wife Michal, an Israeli by background, and I can well
imagine that they derived great enjoyment from their posting. Here, as
examples, are some of the delightful snippets of information that pervade this
book (useful if you are thinking of visiting Argentina).
Buenos Aires is
not the best place for a vegetarian. The city has 807 steak houses and each
Argentine eats an average of 60 kilograms of beef a year.
The citizens have
“the extraordinary and exhausting practice of sitting down to dinner at any
time between 10m and 11 p.m. I found it
challenging to stay animated and conversational when my normal bedtime was
usually about the time that the first course was being cleared”.
The South African
embassy is a triplex penthouse (three-storey apartment) on top of a towering
building in BA. “Given that the doubtless unsuspecting taxpayers of South
Africa provided every diplomat abroad with free housing, a foreign service
allowance (in addition to salary) and, in the case of ambassadors, two
full-time, live-in domestics, it became apparent why many found such a
feather-bedded life abroad so appealing”.
Tony Leon’s
ambassadorship included Paraguay, a poorer country. There the then president,
Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop, had incurred the displeasure of
the Vatican because of his radical views about liberation theology. “More
surprising and salacious was the fact – as the local tabloids had published in
excruciating, lurid detail – that while still a priest, Lugo had fathered a
number of, needless to say illegitimate, children”.
In three years,
the Leons had more than 80 live-in guests from South Africa. A 24-hour visitor
to BA was Cabinet Minister Lindiwe Sisulu. “Elegantly dressed as ever, she
embraced me warmly on arrival. During
her visit we exchanged a warm and easy banter, something that had been notably
absent from previous encounters”.
Asked to
contribute to a “strategic plan” being drafted by the South African government,
Tony Leon and his colleagues produced a seven-page critique and sent it back to
head office. “We addressed a range of problems and inconsistencies of foreign
policy …. We cited numerous examples of our rights delinquencies”, such as
“turning a blind eye to violations of fundamental rights, from Belarus to
Zimbabwe. There was no acknowledgment from head office of these carefully
drafted views and not a word of them appeared in the revised document”.
And there is a
good quote from the Indian ambassador to Argentina: “An ambassador is someone who thinks twice
before he says nothing”.
Tony Leon has
been a successful lawyer, politician and diplomat. He is highly articulate, he
is a fair-minded commentator, and he has a keen eye for an interesting
story. In a different life he could have
been an outstanding newspaperman. Not necessarily a better option, of course.
The Accidental Ambassador by
Tony Leon is published by Picador Africa
and retails at R220. – Michael Green
(Michael Green
was editor of the Daily News, Durban, for 15 years)
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