JOHANNESBURG, (Reuters) – South Africa’s foreign minister Ronald Lamola said on Monday that the United States had not responded to attempts to discuss President Donald Trump’s executive order cutting off aid but that China had pledged support.
Trump cut U.S. financial assistance to the country this month, citing disapproval of its land reform policy and genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
“Despite all our attempts, through our mission in Washington to formally engage and communicate… we are awaiting feedback and a response. We’re hopeful that they will find a moment to … have the discussion with us,” Lamola told Reuters in an interview in the main commercial city of Johannesburg.
Lamola said South Africa was setting up bilateral meetings to shore up support with a number of countries, including China.
“(China said) that they are there in solidarity with us, and they stand ready to pledge support in terms of whatever trade relations and challenges that they can,” the minister said.
South Africa will host the G20 meeting of foreign ministers later this week in Johannesburg, which Rubio is not attending after he expressed disapproval of South Africa’s G20 theme “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability”.
“The agenda will stand,” Lamola said of U.S. objections, adding that all G20 nations had previously agreed on it.
“We will not be defocused by this issue (with) … the U.S.”
“NON-NEGOTIABLE”
South Africa is not hugely dependent on U.S. aid, but some fear that the country’s preferential trade status under the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) could be next.
The country projects itself as non-aligned in geopolitical conflicts, and has sought not to tie its interests too closely to those of the main superpower rivals – the United States, European Union, China and Russia – vying for influence on the continent.
It resisted Western pressure to isolate Russia over Ukraine, and took the risk of upsetting the United states, Israel’s close ally, when it brought the ICJ case over the war in Gaza.
Lamola said South Africa would continue to seek talks with the United States, “but we have to face reality that we have to plan for all scenarios.”
He reiterated that both South Africa’s land reform policy, aiming to redress the dispossession of Black South Africans during colonialism and white minority rule, and its genocide case against Israel at the ICJ were “non-negotiable”.
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Reporting by Nellie Peyton and Tim Cocks; Additional reporting by Tannur Anders and Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Alexander Winning
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