On Senate floor, Senator Coons urges confirmation of nominee for Ambassador to South Africa

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, you and I have had the blessing of traveling to South Africa together, so I know you know, as I do, that it is a critical nation, not just on its own terms as a country of 70 million people of a multilingual, multifaith, multiethnic democracy working to achieve the incredible promise enshrined in its Constitution, working to achieve the vision of a liberation struggle, but it is also a country that is critical to regional security and for the path of the globe and to the security and stability of democracy in this century. This is why I stand to speak briefly on behalf of my friend, Reuben Brigety, the nominee to be our next Ambassador to South Africa, whose confirmation we will take up in just a few moments.

Reuben is someone I admire deeply. He attended the Naval Academy, served in the U.S. Navy, was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State both for African Affairs and for Population, Refugees, and Migration.

I met him as Ambassador to the African Union, knew him well as dean of the Elliott School at GW. He took on the challenge of service as the president of the University of the South, better known as Sewanee; and now our President has nominated him to represent us in South Africa.

As we have seen in recent votes and actions at the United Nations and in discussions and debates around the world, African countries--in this moment, during this war in Ukraine, in the face of Russia's aggression--are turning away from us. They are not believing the reality that it is Russian aggression that is causing food scarcity and fertilizer prices to spike, and they are more than not taking Russia's side on this.

We cannot take these relationships for granted. The United States, for decades, has been a close development and public health partner of South Africa. We have to send our best, and Ambassador Brigety is the right person at the right time to advance the critical relationship goals that we have between the United States and South Africa. Tribute to Alexandra Davis

Mr. President, one of the blessings of serving here in the Senate is getting to know natives of New Jersey, like yourself and like my foreign policy adviser, Allie Davis.

I will do my best to get through these next few minutes of remarks without being unduly emotional, but she deserves a catch in the throat and a tear in the eye because Allie is someone who from the moment she came to join my team 6 years ago has been a remarkable person--a person of great spirit and character, someone who also spent time in South Africa as a young person.

After graduating from the University of Delaware, a tour as a Fulbright in South Africa prepared her to join my team as a foreign policy fellow.

As she was just confessing to me in my office a few moments ago, she knew far less about governance and politics than I imagined. She carries herself with remarkable grace and confidence. She steadily has risen to be a legislative aide, a legislative assistant, and now my foreign policy adviser.

I don't have the time--but I wish I did--to detail all the pieces of significant and important legislation she has helped shepherd through to success. She has critically supported my leadership on the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations team. She has been critical as we have worked to address this moment of global hunger. She has helped get the Global Fragility Act from concept to enactment. She has helped make the Development Finance Corporation a powerful tool for development. She helped shape and craft the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, and she nearly single-handedly, at a time when I was confident this could not be done, got the Sudan Claims Resolution Act through this Congress and fundamentally changed the arc of the search for democracy in Sudan.

We had the chance to travel together on a Presidential mission to Ethiopia, during which she had truly memorable encounters with its head of state and an opportunity to see and participate and help drive diplomacy firsthand. We traveled together to so many other countries: from the UAE to France to Georgia to Italy and, perhaps most memorably, to Sudan, where I was honored to receive one of their leading national awards, which really was an award in recognition of her work on behalf of the Sudanese people.

She goes to serve the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose chairman I accosted last night at an event, and said: You are causing great harm to me, and I resent deeply the fact that you are causing this most talented and skilled and trusted member to leave the Senate and go to the House.

But she joins as a member of their professional staff, a great team. And I know that we will continue to work hard and to work closely together in the years and decades ahead. A great friend, a great colleague, and someone to whom I wish great success in the many years ahead.

With that, I urge my colleagues to vote in support of the nomination of Reuben Brigety to be Ambassador, and I offer my greatest thanks to Allie Davis for her talented and skillful service on behalf of the people of Delaware.

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