Didiza says US visa standoff can be settled as Tau lines up trade talks

National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza says she expects the visa restrictions the United States has placed on certain South African leaders to be settled, and the trade minister is due to sit down with his American counterpart next week.

The United States announced the restrictions this week. Washington says they apply to people it holds responsible for, or complicit in, laws and policies it describes as enabling uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa. SABC News reported the announcement and Didiza’s response.

What the Speaker said

Didiza was speaking at an event of the Parliamentary Gallery Association when she was asked about the standoff.

She said foreign relations are about building relationships, and that she hopes the executive will find common ground on the underlying issues that led Washington to take its position, while giving clarity where it is needed.

She said the engagement has not stopped. It has been ongoing, and she expects South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Roelf Meyer, to keep talking to the American side.

That is the Speaker’s assessment, offered in her capacity as the presiding officer of the National Assembly rather than as a member of the executive that conducts foreign policy. The visa file sits with the presidency and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, and neither has set out a public timeline for a resolution.

The trade track

Running alongside the diplomatic contact is a commercial one. Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau said he will meet his US counterpart next week to discuss trade relations, in the same week the restrictions were announced.

That meeting matters more to most South Africans than the travel arrangements of a handful of leaders. The United States is one of South Africa’s largest single-country trading partners, and the flow of vehicles, machinery, agricultural products and minerals across that route supports jobs in Gauteng assembly plants, Eastern Cape car factories, Western Cape farming districts and the logistics chains that connect them.

South Africa’s access to the American market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act has been the subject of review in Washington for several years, and the outcome of that review carries directly into the export earnings of South African firms and the wages they pay.

What is not yet settled

The restrictions announced this week name no individuals publicly. The United States has not published a list of the people affected, and the South African government has not said which leaders, if any, have been notified. Neither side has set out the conditions under which the measures would be lifted.

A visa restriction of this kind is a decision taken by the issuing state about who may enter its territory. It is not a sanction on trade, and it does not by itself alter the tariff or quota terms under which South African goods enter the United States. Those terms are what the Tau meeting will address.

Didiza’s expectation of a settlement is a statement of intent, not a dated agreement. No joint statement, no negotiating round and no deadline has been announced by either government.

The consequence here

For an ordinary South African reader, the practical question is not who can travel to Washington. It is whether the trade relationship holds, because that relationship shows up as shifts at plants and orders for farmers.

South Africa’s exporters have spent the past several years managing uncertainty about their access to the American market. A ministerial meeting next week is the first concrete step either government has put on the calendar since the restrictions were announced.

What happens next

Tau meets his US counterpart next week, and the outcome of that discussion will indicate whether the trade track is insulated from the visa dispute. Didiza said Ambassador Meyer will continue engaging with the American side. Parliament has not scheduled a debate on the restrictions.

The Enquirer has put questions to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation on the government’s position and will report its answer.

Source: SABC News (website), Didiza optimistic US visa restrictions will be resolved soon