Clear battle lines between South Africa’s Government of National Unity and US President Donald Trump’s new administration have emerged after a week of rising tensions.
South Africa is sending officials to brief governments around Africa and the world on its aims as it chairs the G20 this year, the first African country to do so. It is due to hand over the leadership of G20 to the US in December.
At his State of the Nation Address Thursday evening, President Cyril Ramaphosa told parliament in Cape Town: “We will not be bullied.” He was speaking just hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would not attend the G20 meeting of foreign ministers hosted by South Africa this month because of the country’s promotion of “equality, solidarity and sustainability”.
Echoing President Donald Trump’s threats earlier in the week to cut funding to South Africa because of its land redistribution policies, Rubio said that ”South Africa is doing some very bad things: expropriating private property”. Rubio’s rejection of South Africa’s invitation to the G20 meeting is unprecedented, diplomats say.
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“The work we do and what we stand for needs to be explained to many key players, especially our trading partners and the many countries …. we interact with,” Ramaphosa told parliament.
These delegates would explain “… the many positions we have taken and in particular the objectives we wish to achieve during our presidency of the G20,” said Ramaphosa.
Home support
At home most South Africans, even erstwhile opposition parties, are supporting Ramaphosa in the stand-off with the US this week. At the heart of the row was an amendment to the Land Expropriation Bill signed into law by Ramaphosa last month.
The centre-right Democratic Alliance sternly criticises the land act because of a clause allowing the government to take over land without compensation – but only when it is demonstrably in the public interest.
This puts DA leader John Steenhuisen in a diplomatic bind as minister of agriculture in the GNU coalition with Ramaphosa’s African National Congress. He argued the Americans had misunderstood the land policy and the latest amendment signed by Ramaphosa.
“What president Trump said is not true. There’s no expropriation taking place,” Steenhuisen told The Africa Report in Cape Town just before President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address Thursday.
Steenhuisen wanted to distance his party from the Trump administration’s blunderbuss condemnation of the government and its freeze on funding. With the exception of a few far-right politicians, South Africans have generally brushed off the attacks by Trump and Rubio.
But Steenhuisen urged Ramaphosa to take the rift with the US Administration very seriously: “As soon as South Africa starts to deal with the truth about what is happening the better.”
“There has been no mass expropriation of land,” insisted Steenhuisen. “There’s been no targeting of certain groups … but the bill is flawed and does open the door for potential abuse. And that’s what we’re trying to close down by going to court.”
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Before the latest clash between South Africa and the Trump administration over the land act, Washington has suspended funding for 100 days to all its foreign aid programmes, including life-saving drugs for HIV-AIDs and tuberculosis patients.
“This funding accounts for about 17% of our country’s HIV spend,” Ramaphosa told parliament. “We are looking at various interventions to address the immediate needs and ensure the continuity of these essential services.”
Peaceful resolution of eastern DRC conflict
At the start of his speech, Ramaphosa called for a minute’s silence for the 14 South African soldiers killed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in clashes with the M23 militia and the Rwandan Defence Force in the battle for Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.
“The presence of South African peacekeepers in the eastern DRC is testament to our continued commitment to the peaceful resolution of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts which has cost millions of lives.”
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He called on all parties to embrace the current diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful resolution, especially the initiative led by Angola’s President João Lourenço. A South African team will attend the talks on the DRC crisis in Dar es Salaam today with Southern and East African leaders.
At a time when many at the United Nations headquarters in New York see an existential threat to the organisation from financial strictures imposed by the Trump administration’s funding cuts, Ramaphosa reasserted South Africa’s support for the international system:
“As humanity confronts unprecedented challenges, we are determined that a reformed and representative United Nations must be at the centre of global affairs.”
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And in a coda harking back to the country’s political transition three decades ago, he added: “We will speak in one voice in defence of our national interest, our sovereignty and our constitutional democracy.
“As South Africans, we stand for peace and justice, for equality and solidarity.” And Ramaphosa concluded by laying down an ideological gauntlet but without calling out his opponents by name: “We stand for our shared humanity, not for the survival of the fittest.”
Credit: The Africa Report
