South Africa’s leading foreign policy bureaucrat is offering excuses for failure as the August 1 deadline for a trade deal with the U.S. looms, blaming an American focus on “non-trade” issues like Black Economic Empowerment (BEE).
As Breitbart News has reported, South Africa faces a looming tariff of 30% on all exports — plus a surcharge of 10% applied to the BRICS alliance for its “anti-American” policies — in the absence of a separate deal.
Yet Zane Dangor, the director-general of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Development, has continued to push policies the U.S. opposes — while still supposedly seeking a trade deal.
Earlier this month, for example, Dangor gave a speech to a meeting of the so-called “Hague Group,” a new collection of far-left and totalitarian regimes that opposes the U.S. and Israel within global institutions.
In his speech, Dangor accused Israel of the “crime of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of apartheid” and urged that Israel be held accountable for defending itself against terror.
South Africa has also continued to irritate the U.S. in other ways, such as downgrading the status of Taiwan’s diplomatic mission in the country refusing to recognize its office in Pretoria and only recognizing commercial missions elsewhere.
With just days to go before the looming trade deadline, South Africa’s administrative capital has also floated the idea of renting or even selling its city hall to the Iranian regime for exclusive use.
South Africa has also made no progress on amending its controversial Expropriation Act, which could allow the seizure of white-owned farmland — an issue on which President Donald Trump has personally seized.
Nor has South Africa reformed its BEE policies, which essentially require the racial transfer of ownership of companies. The policy has primarily benefited black South Africans close to the government — not the poor.
Yet Dangor claimed Tuesday that the South African government was doing its best. News24.com reported:
Dangor said that, on the trade issues, “SA was making all the right arguments. What is bedevilling the issues is some of the demands being made around domestic policy”.
Dangor added that, in meetings with various US State Department interlocuters, it had been made clear that they need “certain things” from SA, with BEE high on the agenda.
“What worries us is the US demanding curtailment of sovereignty to get this deal,” he said.
Dangor also said that the lack of an ambassador in Washington was not a problem. Former Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was expelled from the U.S. after Breitbart News reported that he was trashing Trump.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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