You expect consuls to be busy, earnest people.

This holds true for the South African Consul General in New York, Dr Motumisi Tawana.  

Taking up his position as South Africa’s Consul General based in New York in January 2020, he moved quickly to consolidate institutional relations with America’s large and authoritative universities, formalize berthing rights and arrangements with airport and ports authorities, and initiate networking into mayors’ offices and city council executive committees.

Importantly, too, he has extended the country’s consular reach: fifteen U.S. east coast states are now covered from South Africa’s New York consul base, with further spread – Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas, among others – in the process of rolling out.  

Facilitating trade is a major responsibility of consulates, and Dr Tawana has engaged purposefully with the regions’ many commerce chambers as well as the highest echelons of Wall Street. He also instituted and chairs the New York-based South African Business Advisory Council.

Beyond the political and social responsibilities of his office, Dr Tawana is also an expert in navigating the complexities of international trade between Africa and the U.S., and is a sought-after speaker on diplomatic and trade relations, and doing business on the African continent.

As a 24-year veteran of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation, few can match his knowledge of how bureaucracies function and how to pinpoint the right people to get things done.

New frontiers

Now three years into his role, Dr Tawana has also been busy on an unusual front: he has founded, and is immersed in running the country’s first mission-abroad South African Cultural Center.

Opened to coincide with South Africa’s important national holiday, Heritage Day, in September 2021, the Center’s inaugural exhibition was Washboards and Mirrors, the Collages of Zakes Mda, a stunning collection of artworks by a polymath creative mind perhaps better known for his literary works.

Culture as a catalyst for diplomacy

The mission of the Cultural Center is to ensure South Africa’s story is told in a positive, favourable light through arts and culture.

Of course, to an extent this is an adoption of soft power, part of the realpolitik game, in the same way that, many centuries ago, the great European powers exported their cultural ideas as a forerunner or complement to deep diplomacy and geostrategic manoeuvring. And in recent decades, the concept of cultural centers has worked positively for early adopters such as Japan.

“I like to think about how we can build bridges, and culture is the key to connections,” he says. “Of course the creative industries must be developed. They represent employment, jobs and economic activity. ‘’

Currently, visitors seeking consular assistance are often wowed by the permanent exhibition of some 2000 records in all eleven of South Africa’s official languages, and going back as far as 1901. Collated and arranged by well-known South African installation artist Siemon Allen, ‘From Pretoria to Tshwane’ is a comprehensive tribute to South Africa’s musicians.

Dr Tawana clearly relishes the extra role and responsibility of unofficial cultural affairs attaché. “I’m now proud to be called ‘Consul General and Cultural Worker’!”

However, as yet the center doesn’t have a full-time cultural affairs officer or staff, and – although there is space to exhibit – the expertise and logistics of curatorship can be a strain on the consulate’s resources. This contrasts with the likes of Mexico, The Philippines, Germany, among other consulates in New York, which have dedicated personnel for their own Cultural Centers or to handle cultural issues.

“And we are decades behind South Korea, and Japan in particular, who have established magnificent, drawcard culture centers,” Dr Tawana adds, with an eye on the future.

The future vision for the Cultural Center

Dr Tawana says the feedback has been enormously positive, confirming that the Cultural Center has been long overdue. New York is the first, but Dr Tawana’s vision includes a spread across the world – a dynamic cultural outreach to buffer the work of embassies and to reinforce the image of South Africa as a progressive and opportunity infested land. Institutionalizing the centre will liberate fundraising opportunities and make it less dependent on consular resources, thereby allowing for more frequent exhibitions and activities – always, though, with the core mission of showcasing the arts and culture of South Africa and its investment opportunities.