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US-South Africa Tensions: Why the New Visa Curbs? And this is a tactic to scare, especially some of the senior officials. And two of them – Roelf Meyer – who was the constitutional development minister, the first local government minister. He is now the ambassador from Pretoria to the United States. That’s one. And the other that comes to mind as an official, but very influential in broader business circles, Dr. Alistair Reuters. He was formerly the director general of the Department of Trade and Industry and led the National Empowerment Fund, and promoted small business policies that have affirmative action. Those two come to mind and it’s very ironic because they’ve just been declaring how successful they’ve been at attracting investments. I think this is one of those ‘games of chicken,’ pushing as hard as he can with his boss, Marco Rubio, to put more pressure on, to get more concessions. Salaamedia: Yes, but also Patrick you know this obviously this hasn’t happened, because we’ve seen a build up to this decision on the restrictions placed and particularly looking at government officials, lawmakers, the ANC, in particular, and we’ve seen over a period of time, this close relationship – and the close lobbying that has taken place – between organisations like AfriForum, who advocated for Afrikaners, for minority rights, and they seem to have aligned themselves with the United States of America with regards to these visa restrictions on South African officials. Patrick: Yes, you’re absolutely right. AfriForum has shown a very mischievous face and particularly, never really denying that there’s genocide – they may say that Afrikaners are under pressure, there’s a threat, and in the early stages, we’ve identified that it’s sort of nonsense that Trump and Elon Musk, the former Pretoria and Johannesburg and Durban resident, also getting into myth-making about South Africa, to sway a chunk of the US electorate that is called MAGA, Make America Great Again, or sometimes Paleo-Conservative: very, very reactionary and isolationist and wanting to go back to a time when the white American male was profound. So I would agree. I mean, there’s a race politics going on here, racial solidarity with Trump. And Rubio’s State Department has been opening up these refugee opportunities. The only refugees that are coming into the US are Afrikaners. There are about 13,000 that have been accepted, and quite a few hundred have been rejected for reasons that are not all that clear. They may be running out of steam and they’ve run out of that small group of Afrikaners, who are about 2.5 million or more, maybe 3 million who are more, let’s say, grounded or patriotic or at least sticking around. And I think that’s actually the background: that they probably want to continue to roil up the racial politics for their own purposes, which is to keep their own sort of red-meat base happy, to feed them the sense that they are fighting, basically, an affirmative action policy that is so important to have here after 342 years of apartheid. Salaamedia: Yes, and also Patrick, it’s no hidden secret that we’ve seen every forum we’ve seen the Solidarity Movement. They have traveled extensively to the United States of America, they’ve traveled multiple times to meet with US administration officials. This is also detailed in a strategy, a diplomatic mission to the USA. And, you know, although they cite the main issues being land expropriation without compensation, we’ve seen how ‘Kill the Boer’ featured very, very prominently in Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with Donald Trump. Now, all of this, you know, they argue that these policies, these slogans threaten the minority groups in South Africa. And again, this is the reason why even AfriForum has actually welcomed these measures, stating that they punish specific leaders instead of harming ordinary citizens. Patrick: Yes, of course, that’s in some way true, in the sense that who wants to go and get a visa to go to the US, well, maybe government to government. But, you know, it will affect even, in my sector in tertiary education, the universities where we definitely try to have an affirmative action, we definitely prioritise black South Africans. We haven’t done it very well, but that’s definitely the objective. So I can imagine leaders of our universities being potentially caught up in this: not being given a visa, because some State Development apparatchik wants to put more pressure on, and get some publicity. Let’s just add the others. You’ve mentioned two – scrap expropriation without compensation and ban the song ‘Kill the Boer,’ that nostalgic struggle song. The other three that Brent Bozell has insisted on, are to protect farmers who are allegedly victims of violence. There’s very little evidence. Most of the people killed in rural farm attacks are in fact black. The other, being that it’s an Elon Musk approach because he wants to bring Starlink here, but he doesn’t want a 30% co-investor whom he could make a loan to, for those shares. He wouldn’t lose any money, but he just doesn’t want any kind of black person in on his ownership of Starlink South Africa. And the final one, which might be the most important, is to demonstrate that South Africa is non-aligned and won’t support Iran and Russia and China and the apparent axis that is against the US in some of the international conflicts. So that’s really the most interesting now that BRICS has just happened. BRICS didn’t do very much, didn’t mention Donald Trump by name or the US, didn’t do anything concrete to defend. So I don’t think there’s much really substantive there, because South Africa doesn’t import oil from Iran and doesn’t have more than a million rand or so worth of trade in the form of mostly dates and some very small bits of South African exports. So it’s not really a substantive point, is it? But it’s the symbolism that South Africa has gone to The Hague and to the International Court of Justice, saying that Israel is committing a genocide. And I think that’s still part of what the Rubio State Department wants to tamp down, and probably to send a signal to the rest of the major opponents, the three being Russia, China and Iran, that they can begin to divide and conquer. And let’s just be frank, they did it: Trump did it pretty well, in the sense that he has broken the BRICS in half, with India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, even Indonesia in the Board of Peace. And that is a very serious problem. I mean, when BRICS countries just are split like that, and some of them being part of recolonizing Gaza, and then others being, of course, opposed: Brazil and South Africa. I mean, let’s also be frank, all of the BRICS except Iran have major trade relationships with Israel. Salaamedia: Well, absolutely. And I think, you know, also, when one looks at it from the South African government perspective, and we know, since we have taken this case of Israel to the ICJ, we knew South Africa would have been targeted as well. So despite some of the internal dynamics, like AfriForum and the like playing out in South Africa, certainly Palestine has been right at the top of the agenda, particularly the ICJ case. And we knew at some point in time, the United States of America will do whatever it can to punish the country. And using these visa restrictions, you know, is just one of those measures. Patrick: Yes. Can I also add, that the tour that Salaamedia has been so crucial in, having George Galloway and his wife Gayatri, having Yvonne Ridley in your facilities, that’s very, very encouraging, because it means we will start getting a very, very strong revival, of an awareness of the importance of internationalism. And I think the tour and the speaking engagements that Galloway et al are going to engage in should give us some stronger support. However, this is also coming at a time where, as I mentioned, Roelf Meyer, the ambassador to the U.S., plus Alastair Ruiters, who’s the investment advisor to President Ramaphosa, they are bragging. And just a week ago in News24, they were claiming that they were successful with not just some tourism by U.S. visitors, which apparently is going to be involving more and more hotels from the U.S., some of the big chains, I think that’s regrettable, because it’s really just a branding sort of connection, Park Hyatt and Marriott. But also, unfortunately, Ruiters and Meyer have been promoting things like ExxonMobil coming to Richards Bay to set up a methane processing plant with a local company, very inexperienced, Zululand Energy Terminals. And that process, I think, will make South Africa much more energy dependent. Apparently, if Exxon does get involved and uses Exxon gas from Houston and sends it over, then we will be switching away from coal but towards gas. But gas is actually 85 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. That’s one of several. You know about Amazon and their controversies in Cape Town. And Renergen. And also in Richards Bay, there’s a company, BHP Billiton, which uses more electricity – six percent of our grid – than any other. It’s called South 32, doing aluminium. And that also looks like Alcoa, a U.S. company, taking over. So I’m actually a bit worried that instead of doing what the rest of the world is doing, that is, insulating against that sort of pressure, where Donald Trump is turning on and turning off trade, or maybe even energy to South Africa – it’ll be his successor, given that it’s a long time period before ExxonMobil will actually be doing the gas, because it takes a while to put into place – but whoever his successor might be, would have that sort of power that we’ve seen Trump exercise, to turn on, to turn off, to do enormous damage. So I think what Ruiters and Meyer are doing is quite damaging. We have Parks Tao obviously encouraging them as the trade minister. But I think we actually need an open discussion in South Africa: should tighter connections to the U.S. be the objective of policy, as it has been? Should we be subimperial in that sense, within imperialism? Or instead, isn’t it time to be more anti-imperial? Salaamedia: And I know you have been a regular with us on Salaam Media, so it’s an absolute pleasure. But I’m sure a lot of this can be discussed a lot more, in the form of a panel discussion, which you know that I host on a Wednesday evening. So I’m going to obviously apply my mind and hopefully very, very soon we will be able to unpack, because I’m sure there’s a lot of devil in the detail of what you have just spoken about in terms of corporates and corporate involvement in South Africa and the bigger and the greater agenda that is at play. But for now, we thank you. We do appreciate you taking time out with us, Patrick, as always. Take care and all the best to you. Patrick: Thank you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo7m-jUNblA Back |
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