Statement by Ryan Smith MP – DA Spokesperson on International Relations and Cooperation:
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is deeply saddened by South Africa’s exclusion as a beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) as per a decision communicated by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
This development was avoidable and completely unnecessary in the context of sound economic diplomacy and negotiation upon which Minister of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Ronald Lamola, has repeatedly refused to concede and failed to broker.
This decision, which has granted South African exporters preferential and duty-free access to the U.S. market since AGOA’s implementation in May 2000, is a devastating blow to the South African economy, especially the agriculture and agro-processing, automotive manufacturing, and mining sectors.
Hundreds of thousands of South Africans employed through AGOA-dependent industries will now pay the price for Minister Lamola’s ideological obstinacy and sheer diplomatic ineptitude.
By failing to protect and secure South Africa’s economic interests with the USA, our second-largest trading partner, Minister Lamola has placed our country on a path of rapid economic ruin.
As our country’s chief diplomat, Minister Lamola is tasked with placing the interests of South African citizens ahead of party-political whims. It is also his responsibility to skillfully and calmly navigate tumultuous geopolitical tensions dominating contemporary foreign affairs. His very public and deliberately antagonistic approach towards SA-US relations has put on full display the ANC’s lack of diplomatic finesse and warped international priorities at the economy’s expense.
A DA-led national government will prioritise the restoration of preferential access to the world’s largest market, and maximise global trade opportunities in the interests of all South African workers and exporters. Sound economic diplomacy and international trade are critical to building a thriving and diversified South African economy underpinned by evidence-based domestic legislation measured on outcome and not intent.
South Africa’s AGOA exclusion goes far beyond Minister Lamola’s inability to negotiate on the requests made to South Africa by the Trump administration.
AGOA was established as an act of economic goodwill to the people of South Africa to help grow and develop our post-apartheid economy in our country’s democratic infancy.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative outlines AGOA’s rigorous eligibility requirements which include continual progress towards a market-based economy and a commitment to the rule of law.
The ANC has squandered this decades-long opportunity by gradually strangling economic growth and entrenching rampant corruption through race-based legislation such as the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act (B-BBEE), and eroding the rule of law and executive accountability as exposed in the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture.
Our country’s AGOA exclusion must be understood as the diplomatic and economic consequences our country now suffers for the ANC’s failed domestic policies which have shrunk South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, paralysed economic growth, and plunged millions more South Africans into abject poverty.
Minister Lamola and President Ramaphosa’s outright refusal to engage with the DA on domestic policy reform in the Government of National Unity (GNU), as per the democratic mandate of South Africa’s citizens, is also to blame.
The ANC’s outdated world view, which is at direct odds with the principles of the South African constitution, has led to South Africa adopting a deeply inconsistent foreign policy that has actively aligned us with international despots and human rights abusers in Russia and Iran.
The ANC’s international party-political alliances, which find worrying expression in state foreign policy, are a blatant violation of our country’s constitutional principles and the requisite party-state divide. It is no wonder that the liberal democratic world now views South Africa with caution and suspicion.
The ANC’s rapid political collapse in South Africa comes as a direct result of its mismanagement of the South African economy. This includes its failed economic diplomacy agenda and outdated economic policies which have, over time, made South Africans poorer and now placed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the firing line.
The only way to rescue the South African economy and restore critical international trade, is to vote the ANC and its failed policies out of government.
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