New Delhi: After new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused South Africa of “anti-Americanism” and “using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality, & sustainability’”, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa came out in defence of his country during a national address on Thursday, asserting that South Africa would not be bullied.
While saying that he won’t be attending the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg, Rubio accused South Africa of “doing very bad things”. His definition of those bad things? “Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote “solidarity, equality, & sustainability.” In other words: DEI and climate change. My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.”
“We are witnessing the rise of nationalism, protectionism, the pursuit of narrow interests, and the decline of common cause,” Ramaphosa said during his State of the Nation address in Cape Town.
“This is the world that we as South Africa, a developing economy, must now navigate, but we are not daunted,” he said.
“We are, as South Africans, a resilient people, and we will not be bullied,” Ramaphosa said to cheers from some lawmakers in parliament. The South African leader did not make direct reference to the United States or Trump.
Rubio was the first Donald Trump appointee to have criticised South Africa since the new US government took over. Trump himself had a few days ago slammed the South African government over an expropriation act signed into law by Ramaphosa last month.
According to the Expropriation Bill, the government may in some circumstances offer “nil compensation” for property where land is expropriated in the public interest.
Trump accused the South African government of confiscating land and “treating certain classes of people very badly” and announced that it was cutting all future funding.
South Africa has rejected these accusations with the country’s foreign minister Ronald Lamola saying “there is no arbitrary dispossession of land / private property” with South Africa’s new land reform law.
“This law is similar to the Eminent domain laws,” Lamola said. With eminent domain laws, Lamola is referring to a law used in the US, as well as in other countries, that allows the state or the federal government to take private property for public use.
The issue of land is a highly emotive one in a country where historically, racist laws saw black families forcibly removed from their land by the apartheid government.
(With inputs from DW)
