The presidency and the City of Johannesburg are in discussions to halt the renaming of Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive, to avoid an escalation of tension between SA and the US.
Though the Johannesburg city council on Monday struck down a motion to halt the renaming of the street, which is located on the same street as the US Consulate in Johannesburg’s financial and commercial heartland, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, said discussions between the presidency and Johannesburg’s leadership were bearing fruit as the latter had been “receptive” to suggestions.
Khaled is a prominent Palestinian activist and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine group. She rose to fame in the 1960s after being involved in hijacking a plane on a journey from Rome to Tel Aviv in protest against what she labelled Israeli aggression towards Palestinians.
The renaming of Sandton Drive, which has been in the pipeline since 2024, could raise tension between the US and SA, as the US already considers SA too close to its adversaries. The US has previously cited SA’s move to haul Israel before the International Court of Justice (accusing it of genocide in Gaza) as an example of Pretoria threatening its global security interests.
“We have a major diplomatic situation that we are managing and that we need to manage, please support and co-operate,” Magwenya said during a media briefing on Thursday.
Magwenya said the presidency had requested that Johannesburg not “engage in a manner that will further inflame the situation [and to rather] look at how you can manage your processes in such a way that does not complicate the move by Ramaphosa to reset SA’s relationship with the Trump administration”.
The expulsion of US ambassador Ebrahim Rasool from the US last week was another pressure point for the government, which sought to reset its relations with the Trump administration.
Rasool is due back in the country on Sunday.
Magwenya said organisations planning on various “homecoming” celebrations should refrain from “partaking or engaging in actions that may seem inflammatory and that may worsen the already volatile diplomatic relations with the US”.
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