South African officials keep holding talks with their US counterparts despite tensions over Washington’s “racist” policies because of its “strategic” importance, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a rare interview.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Pretoria of carrying out a “genocide” against white South Africans, a claim widely rejected, and launched a program to admit Afrikaners as refugees. Ramaphosa told The New York Times the policy was “racist” — a word he used multiple times in the interview.
South Africa last year said the US had applied pressure on Pretoria to end laws aimed at redressing wealth imbalances caused by apartheid, and Washington later slapped a 30% tariff on many South African exports — the highest on the continent. Business leaders in Africa’s biggest economy were given a reprieve after the US Supreme Court last month struck down Trump’s global trade tariffs. Ramaphosa said efforts to maintain ties with the US were bearing fruit and pointed to the fact that South Africa was not removed from the AGOA trade program, which gives some African countries duty-free access to the US, when the pact was recently extended by a year.