South Africa: Pretoria Puzzled By Punitive US Travel Bans – – ‘What More Must We Do?’
Even the US ambassador has acknowledged South Africa’s progress in meeting President Donald Trump’s demands, says President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special adviser, Alistair Ruiters, in response to a travel ban on unnamed South Africans announced by the US.
The South African government says it is mystified by the US announcement on 15 September that it is imposing punitive targeted travel sanctions on South Africans, because even the US ambassador to South Africa had publicly acknowledged that South Africa has addressed two of Washington’s five key domestic demands (the “five asks”).
Pretoria says it is engaging actively with the US on the other three demands and is making progress on resolving them.
Alistair Ruiters, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special adviser and a key negotiator with the US for more than a year, said that over the past few days US ambassador Brent Bozell had been using two words: “refusal and rejection… that we refuse to answer the question of the five asks [demands], [that] we reject the five asks. And that’s so far from the truth.”
He said Bozell himself had acknowledged in an interview with Business Day that SA had addressed the ask that Pretoria should not interfere in President Donald Trump administration’s programme of offering refugee status to Afrikaners, whom it claims (without evidence) are being persecuted in SA.
By Daily Maverick.
