President Cyril Ramaphosa has described his bilateral meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump as “robust and fruitful”, signalling a new chapter of engagement between South Africa and the United States, particularly in trade and investment.
Speaking to South African media upon the conclusion of his Working Visit to the U.S. capital, Washington D.C., President Ramaphosa said the two leaders had an “in-depth and positive exchange”, not only on lighter matters such as golf, but critically on economic cooperation and mutual concerns.
“We had a really good bilateral, although a number of issues came up, which you will all have observed, and we were able to have a robust engagement with Mr. Trump in your presence.
“Following that engagement, which you all witnessed, we retired to the Cabinet Room for lunch. We were then able to have really good in depth exchanges with President Trump and his other officials,” the President said on Wednesday.
A major outcome of the meeting was a renewed commitment to sustained engagement between the two nations, especially at the trade and industry level.
President Ramaphosa stressed that discussions will continue on several key matters, including investment flows, tariff structures, and access to the U.S. market through frameworks such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
“I want to confirm that there will continue to be engagement between South Africa and the United States officials, particularly at the trade and industry level, to deal with the package of issues that we had tabled that have to do with trade and investment.
“I was rather pleased that there’s a firm agreement and undertaking that we are going to continue engaging, so there’s no disengagement. For us, that was one of the key outcomes that we had wanted.
“Our objective in coming here was to reset relations between the two countries and to reposition our relations, which had become contaminated by some of the issues that had been raised during the engagement,” the President said.
The President said the bilateral dialogue was an opportunity to clarify concerns and address misconceptions.
“It turned out that President Trump’s concern is about the safety of the people of South Africa. Much as he zeroed it down to white farmers, we kept saying there is a security problem and we are not running away from that. There is criminality.
“We even sought to deal with it from its genesis… When the economy is not growing, when there is poverty and when there’s unemployment, one of the social ills that we get as a derivative is criminality that spreads itself around the country. It’s not only in farms — it’s in rural and even urban areas. He [President Trump] expressed his views on that, and I was rather pleased that a number of our compatriots were able to deal with that,” the President said.
During the engagement at the Oval Office, Zingiswa Losi, President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions — the country’s largest trade union– told President Trump that South Africa has a violence and crime issue rather than a race issue.
“If you go into the rural areas where the black majority are, [there is gender-based violence against] women and the elderly…The problem in South Africa is not necessarily about race, but it is about crime and we are here to [look at] how both nations can work together to reset trade relations and investment, and also help us [to] have the technology that is needed to address the level of crime we have in our country,” Losi said.
