SA must prioritise appointment of US ambassador

News24

5 days ago

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On Tuesday, the US House foreign affairs committee voted 34-16 to send the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act to the full House of Representatives, where it must still undergo processes long before it becomes law.
The measure would need to pass both the House and the Senate before it could be signed into law.
The proposed law is one of several sanctions that South Africa has suffered since President Donald Trump took office. He has stopped funds provided to South Africa through USAid, hampering a lot of developmental work in the country. He has announced that he will impose a 30% import tariff on goods from this country. He has even threatened an additional 10% tariff due to the fact that South Africa is a member of the Brics bloc of developing nations.
Trump has overall sought to punish South Africa in every possible way.
This new bill proposes a full review of the bilateral relationship between the two countries, and to identify South African government officials and ANC leaders eligible for the imposition of sanctions. It plans to sanction ANC leaders under America's Global Magnitsky Act, which imposes financial and visa restrictions on individuals deemed guilty of human rights abuses or corruption.
But the irony is that South Africa is being punished for merely being critical of Israel and taking that country to the International Court of Justice for its genocidal actions against Palestinians.
This step is almost an obligation for a country that went through apartheid and cannot keep silent while the Israel government kills and starves Palestinians. The majority of the sponsors of the bill are known to be recipients of donations from Israel lobby groups. So, it is almost a price that we should be proud to pay.
There are other ancillary motivations added for the envisaged sanctions, but South Africa's Middle East policy is the primary one.
However, the real disturbing observation of this situation is that South Africa is absolutely missing in these debates. It is not enough to be right, you have to convince the role players why our position is correct.
At the moment, South Africa is a spectator while it is the subject of punitive measures and debates in the US. A while ago president Cyril Ramaphosa announced that businessman Mcebisi Jonas would be an envoy to the country to meet the relevant stakeholders and make South Africa's case.
It is now evident that Jonas was not even allowed to start on this journey. The US had already expelled SA ambassador Ebrahim Rasool for remarks he had made against the US.
Now more than ever, we need South Africa to expedite the appointment of an ambassador to try and influence these disturbing developments. It is a moot point whether the ambassador would be able (on their own) to arrest these punitive measures, but the appointment of an ambassador is the only official way to make our voice heard and to influence discourse.
The department of internal relations and co-operation (Dirco) and the president need to take this up as an urgent matter. We know that the world is dealing with a maverick US president and administration, but we can do better than throw our hands up in despair.