John Matisonn - US expands refugee policy ahead of Oval Office showdown with Cyril Ramaphosa

Key topicsUS widens SA refugee policy to include broader racial minoritiesRamaphosa faces high-stakes White House visit amid AGOA, BEE tensionsElon Musk, Trump may confront SA leader on Israel case, BEE policies.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By John Matisonn.The Trump administration has expanded the definition of South Africans eligible for its refugee resettlement programme ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s high stakes meeting with his US counterpart at the White House on Wednesday. President Donald Trump’s original order on February 7 fast-tracked refugee status to “ethnic minority Afrikaners … who are victims of unjust racial discrimination”. But last week new guidance from the US State Department widened eligibility to those “of Afrikaner ethnicity or … a member of a racial minority… able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.”This is just the latest announcement that might keep the South African president off balance in the high stakes meeting that is likely to start with a media availability in the Oval Office with Vice President J D Vance and the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. While no definition of “racial minorities” is provided, it would be natural to assume that includes whites who are not Afrikaners as well as Indians, Coloureds and anyone else of non-African descent.Ramaphosa and his team are acutely aware that Trump choreographs these events in a way that leaves the visitor uneasy, wondering if they will be humiliated in front of the cameras as Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was in February.The presidency is also anticipating that South African-born billionaire Elon Musk will also be present, and that Musk may confront Ramaphosa about BEE requirements his companies acquire black South African shareholders, while Rubio tackles him on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.The expanded definition of South African refugees follows intense criticism in the US because Trump fast-tracked white South Africans to the front of the queue while his order freezing the admission all other refugees remains in place..Read more:.White refugees welcomed, Afghan allies abandoned in Trump’s America - Patricia Lopez.US TV screens and social media showed refugees in countries where a genocide has been official declared and its victims lacked food and luggage, while the 59 white South Africans all arrived with extensive luggage and apparently healthy families.The South African contingent, which includes Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, Trade and Industries minister Parks Tau and Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshaveni have prepared for the possibility that Ramaphosa could be criticized in front of the media by Trump, his officials, or favoured journalists Trump picks out to ask a question.As leader of the party supported by most whites, the DA, Steenhuisen’s presence could help Ramaphosa to make the case that the government is sympathetic to white farmers. Steenhuisen is likely to be interviewed in the US media about conditions of white farmers in South Africa. While the South African delegation badly wants to retain its trade privileges under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), Trump’s strong preference for bilateral, reciprocal trade agreements makes that unlikely. AGOA is not a trade agreement, but simply a one-way US allocation of duty free imports from African countries aimed at assisting their economies. It would be hard to imagine a trade arrangement that Trump would like less. Trump’s negotiating pattern has been to start with extremely punishing demands, as he did with South Africa both on trade and criticisng South African domestic policies. He later tempers his extreme positions in order to get more favourable deals than he believes he would have made without his initial scare tactics. But it remains difficult to predict a positive outcome if Ramaphosa is unwilling to compromise.Many ANC leaders strongly support both the Israel policy and minimum black ownership BEE rules. On the other hand, it is just possible that Ramaphosa uses this extreme pressure from Trump to carve out a compromise that maintains the BEE policy intact while expanding use of some alternatives that provides support to disadvantaged communities without giving away shares in companies.That remains an outside chance, but if it happened it could significantly unlock investment by both local and international entrepreneurs in South Africa.

John Matisonn - US expands refugee policy ahead of Oval Office showdown with Cyril Ramaphosa

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