Trade talks between South Africa and the US have been hit by “sticking points” over “domestic issues,” Pretoria’s International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola said.
Specifically, Washington — South Africa’s second-biggest trading partner — has put pressure on Pretoria to end Black Economic Empowerment laws aimed at redressing wealth imbalances caused by apartheid, slapping a 30% tariff on imports over laws that the Trump administration says unjustly discriminate against white South Africans.
Lamola said BEE, land redistribution laws, and the “false narrative” of a genocide had been raised in the latest trade talks. “We’ve insisted that this should be separated from the trade engagements,” he said on Tuesday at the FT Africa Summit in London.
Talks could get more, rather than less, complicated: On Monday, the second-biggest party in South Africa’s government — the pro-business Democratic Alliance — proposed a bill to replace BEE laws, which it says have become an excuse for state-sponsored corruption, a move that threatens to upend the shaky coalition.