- To Dispatch Delegation To Meet Trump’s Team
By Abiola Olawale
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced plans to dispatch a high-level delegation to the United States to address ongoing disputes between the two countries and forge a “meaningful deal” encompassing diplomacy and trade.
Ramaphosa made this known while speaking on Thursday at an event on the sidelines of G20 meetings in South Africa.
He said: “We would like to go to the United States to do a deal.We don’t want to go and explain ourselves, we want to go and do a meaningful deal with the United States on a whole range of issues.
“We have got to make a deal of one sort or another on trade issues, on diplomatic issues, on political issues, a whole span of issues.”
The New Diplomat reports that this comes amid heightened diplomatic tensions between the US and South Africa.
These tensions escalated following South Africa’s domestic land reform policies.
This development led to the US decision to freeze nearly $440 million in annual aid amidst the looming threat to South Africa’s preferential trade status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
It would be recalled that US President Donald Trump had publicly criticized South Africa’s Expropriation Act, signed into law by Ramaphosa in 2024.
Ramaphosa had said that the law allows the government to acquire land without compensation under specific conditions deemed to be in the public interest.
Also, it was said that the legislation aims to address the enduring racial disparities in land ownership.
However, the Trump administration has framed this law as discriminatory against white Afrikaner farmers, echoing claims amplified by influential figures like Elon Musk, a South African-born billionaire and close Trump ally.
