Johannesburg — Goldman Sachs chairman Peter Sutherland

PETER Sutherland wears many hats. Or jerseys, if you like. The Irishman and former captain of rugby club Lansdowne has also been a lawyer, politician and trade liberalisation apparatchik. As he sits down to lunch at Sandton's Wang Thai restaurant, however, the 61-year-old Sutherland is wearing the hat of chairman of Goldman Sachs International. The chairman of the investment bank's operations for Europe and Africa is on a two-day visit to SA, is catching up with old friends and is keen to promote the idea of liberalisation.

It is an important time for SA, he says. Trade talks are gasping for breath and a resource-hungry world eyes Africa with interest.

" We're at an important reflection point in regard to sub-Saharan Africa as a whole ," he says. "There is an increasing focus, not merely from Europe and the US, but I think it's particularly evident in regard to China ."

A bank such as Goldman wants business on the back of the growing interest in Africa -- its South African MD was recently in China talking to clients -- but it also sees opportunities for itself .

"We're increasingly involved in principal investing ourselves. We see this as a growth area."

SA's macroeconomic policies have brought great benefit to the country . But Sutherland repeats a point that his bank has made about this economy for a long time -- that it should do away with foreign exchange controls.

In July 2004, Goldman published a study saying that ending these controls within a two-year period could boost economic growth by one percentage point and double foreign direct investment. It could even boost the value of the trade-weighted value of the rand 20%, the report said.

Sutherland says he has not come to SA to give any particular message, but agrees that further liberalisation is necessary.

"We are still of the view that is a good thing," he says. "I would simply say in relation to that -- the faster the better for the South African economy, in my opinion. I appreciate that the government has consistently been saying that we're moving in that direction, so I would say 'keep moving'."

The man who, at age 35, became Ireland's youngest attorney-general, counts Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin among his friends, plus an exile who taught at Dublin's Trinity College, one Kader Asmal.

Sutherland, a barrister by trade, tried his hand in politics, running in 1973 for the centre-right Fine Gael party. He lost, and never ran again. However, he was appointed by prime minister Garret FitzGerald in 1981 to the non-voting cabinet-level position of attorney-general. In 1985 he became the European Community commissioner for competition and internal markets.

After a time as chairman of Ireland's largest lender, Allied Irish Banks, Sutherland was appointed director-general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the global trade deal forum that in 1995 became the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The failure of the developed and developing worlds to agree on a programme for tariff reductions and to conclude the Doha round of trade talks was a shame, he says. Negotiators who called off talks last month are due to meet again in early September to find a way to push the process forward. A Canadian and New Zealand compromise tabled last week sets out a draft plan for cutting agricultural subsidies by the US alongside cuts by countries such as SA on industrial goods.

That the Doha talks collapsed over the issue of agriculture was "particularly lamentable" because the sector "plays such a diminishing role in the GDP (gross domestic product) of developing countries, let alone the developed, who seem so anxious to continue to protect it," he says.

Our platter of sushi arrives. It is rare that my guest eats more than me in a lunchtime interview. Interviewees are usually too busy talking to eat and I finish long before them. Not with Peter Sutherland, however. He advises me when we sit down that he has a large appetite.

"I'm warning you, as my wife always tells me, I eat twice as fast as she does, so her supply always diminishes!"

Yet another hat Sutherland wears is that of chairman of oil giant BP. He isn't keen to talk about the London-listed company that has had a rough time lately. CEO John Browne stepp ed down after being found to have lied in court over his relationship with a former partner. In May, just days after Browne's resignation, the company obeyed a court order to publish an internal report blaming senior executives for a poor safety culture that led to a fatal explosion in 2005 at a Texas refinery. Browne was not faulted over the explosion.

"We've had changes in BP and they're so publicly known that they don't really deserve comment from me," Sutherland says. "John Browne was a tremendous CEO. We now have another one (Tony Hayward) who I think will be a tremendous CEO as well."

Returning to the issue of trade, Sutherland says the current strains on an organisation such as the WTO are worrying. If it loses credibility and participants refuse to accept the validity of its dispute-settling mechanism, its key component will be lost.

And , he points out, the poorer countries will be the losers.

"If you do not have rules of the game, you have the law of the jungle. And the law of the jungle will ultimately destroy the interests of the weak ."

Sutherland, who is planning to spend much of September in France watching the Rugby World Cup, is pleased to hear the Springboks are considering adopting a haka-style pregame dance to intimidate opponents. He laughs about having played in a world "Golden Oldies" rugby tournament against a Kiwi team with some former All Blacks in it .

"They did their haka and we, the Irish team, decided we had to do something in response. We danced Ring a Ring o' Roses. Of course, they saw this as a massive affront and there was a monumental punch-up inside two seconds of the commencement of the match!"

As we conclude over decaf coffees, Sutherland leans forward on one elbow, pointing a forefinger, politician's cap firmly back on.

What Ireland has done, SA must also do. But unlike SA, which still has a choice, the freeing up of the Irish economy came about because the country had nowhere else to go.

By the late '80s, the country had a soaring unemployment rate and a per-capita GDP ratio that was two-thirds the European Union average.

Today, by contrast, the country's per-capita GDP is eighth out of a US government ranking of 229 economies, at $44500. Next comes the US at $44000. SA stands 76th at $13300.

In 1987, Sutherland's Fine Gael party, then in opposition, voted with the ruling Fianna Fa il party -- in "an act of calculated, but extreme generosity" -- to bring in stringent fiscal measures and many of the reforms that have since Ireland's economy the success it has become, he says. These deeply unpopular measures cost Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes the chance of ever becoming prime minister .

Unlike Ireland, SA is enjoying a time of great prosperity and benign economic conditions . But that is no excuse for stalling on further reforms, he says.

"There are two moments for courageous and dramatic political activity. One is when your back is to the wall and you have to do it, and one is when conditions are sufficiently benign to enable you to do it."

And with that, Sutherland puts on all his hats and leaves the restaurant.