ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has thrown down the gauntlet to the Trump administration, saying the government of national unity (GNU) won’t abandon redressing colonial imbalances under duress from the US.
In July, US legislators voted to advance a bill that proposes reviewing the US relationship with SA due to objections over its foreign policy and potentially imposing sanctions on government officials.
The bill proposes “a full review of the bilateral relationship” and to “identify SA government officials and ANC leaders eligible for the imposition of sanctions”.
The measure would need to pass the House and the Senate before it could be signed into law. Many bills at this stage never go to a vote.
Mbalula’s comments come as the government is frantically trying to secure a trade deal with the US before Trump’s decision to impose a 30% tariff on SA exports.
The tariff is set to come into effect at week’s end. Earlier this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa said SA was still pursuing diplomatic efforts to have the tariffs reduced.
Briefing the media on the outcomes of the ANC national executive committee meeting held at the weekend, Mbalula said on Monday the ANC would not be coerced into reversing its progressive transformation laws.
“If it means we are going to suffer through sanctions as leaders of the ANC, let it be,” he said.
“We will never back imperialists to subvert our democracy, to subvert our sovereignty. It happened during the period of struggle, it will happen even now. We will never forsake our country which we fought for its liberation. Not this ANC. Not this leadership.
“If they want to bring sanctions on us, let them bring them. But this country, all of its citizens, know this is a democratic country, it’s a liberated country and we are still transforming this country in order to achieve equity,” Mbalula said.
“We will still pursue redress because we are not equal in this economy. The economy is still male, white dominated.”
He said it was impossible to abandon transformation laws. The Trump administration, said Mbalula, “is asking us to abandon the very essence of what we are, which is not possible”.
He said the 30% tariffs would be bad for the economy, “but you can’t, for national interest, undo, say A or B, in order to appease the US”.
“That’s what the US wants from us, that we must do away with certain policies, that for us, in terms of transformation is not going to be possible,” Mbalula said.
Relations between the US and SA have reached a low point, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly making unsubstantiated claims of “white genocide” in the country.
The allegations have been central to an executive order issued by Trump in February, cutting funding to SA aimed at punishing the country.
The department of trade, industry & competition has set up an export support desk to assist affected companies.
In a joint press conference hosted this week by trade minister Parks Tau and his counterpart in international relations & co-operation, Ronald Lamola, they said the government, in partnership with the Industrial Development Corporation, would invite applications from eligible companies to absorb and offset the new 30% tariff by cutting their underlying costs.
In addition, the government was working on the so-called export and competitiveness support programme, which would address the immediate funding crunch and the need for productivity enhancements, Lamola told reporters.
Without swift countermeasures to the tariff wall, up to 100,000 jobs could be lost, headline inflation could rise by 0.4 percentage points and GDP could shrink by about 0.6 percentage points, while the rand could come under pressure, according to estimates from the Reserve Bank.
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