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South Africa to ask China, France and Germany for help-WRITTEN BY LUKE FRASER
A South African delegation will head to several countries in a bid to get support ahead of meetings in the United States, where views on South Africa are quickly souring.
According to the Sunday Times, a top-level team will head to Washington to mend strained relations between the two countries.
However, to avoid humiliation, the team will try and garner support from several international allies and will travel to France, Germany, the EU HQ in Brussels, China, Brazil and other BRICS members first.
The team will be announced this week once President Cyril Ramaphosa returns from the AU summit in Ethiopia.
A senior government official said that stopping in the USA first will likely result in humiliation or the USA simply ignoring South Africa.
South Africa’s relations with the USA have been strained since the signing of the Expropriation Act earlier this year.
Ramaphosa signed the Bill, which will allow the state to expropriate land for the “public interest.”
However, there are concerns that the new law will allow for an abuse of power through a clause stating that expropriation without compensation is possible, albeit under very specific circumstances.
The law is primarily procedural and is very similar to laws in many other countries worldwide, such as eminent domain in the USA.
However, amid what the South African government calls misinformation and propaganda, US President Donald Trump claimed that the South African government is taking land and treating Afrikaners terribly.
Trump subsequently signed executive orders which cut aid funding to South Africa and allowed Afrikaaners to apply for refugee status in the USA.
There has been some relief, with aid funding expected to still flow to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Moreover, it is also likely that Afrikaaners will struggle to meet the criteria to qualify as refugees under US law.
The US government, however, continues to escalate tensions with South Africa. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio protested a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in South Africa this week.
South Africa is hosting the G20 Summit later this year, and it is unclear whether Trump will attend the meetings of the world’s most powerful leaders.
Four conservative Republican congressmen have also now called the South African government an “ethnonationalist gangster regime”.
Another key source of division between South Africa and the newly-appointed US Government is South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
The risks of a political divide with South Africa’s second-biggest trading partner could be immense.
South Africa could lose trade benefits of the African Growth & Opportunity Act (Agoa), which will be a huge blow to the economy.
The congressmen urged Trump to block South Africa from the trade benefits of the African Growth & Opportunity Act (Agoa), which would be a major blow to the economy, and to consider cutting diplomatic ties.
AGOA will likely end in September 2025. Although hopes for a renewal under the Biden administration were growing, these hopes are dwindling fast under Trump.
Aluma Capital chief economist Frederick Mitchell said that South Africa stands to lose billions if it is booted from AGOA, with South Africa exporting roughly $8.3 billion worth of goods to the US in 2023.
BUSINESSTECH
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