Lamola said South Africa has decided to treat the US the same way it has been treated
International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola says South Africa will assign a junior official to hand over the G20 presidency to the United States (US) government.
Lamola confirmed at the G20 Leaders’ Summit on Saturday that President Cyril Ramaphosa will not be able to hand over the G20 presidency to a junior official when the two-day gathering of world leaders ends.
For the first time in history, the G20 summit was held in South Africa.
G20 handover
The US government had informed South Africa that it will be sending a delegation to the closing ceremony of the G20 Summit.
It reiterated that the delegation will not participate in the summit; it will attend only for the official handover of the G20 gavel.
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Lamola explained how the handover will take place.
“We have communicated to the US embassy that South Africa welcomes the fact that the US now wants us to hand over to them the leadership of the G20.
“When they communicated this, it was very late and they have also stated that it will be a chargé d’affaires of the US in their mission here in South Africa.
“And as you can see there are heads of state and the heads of state that are not here have designated appropriate officials who are engaging in this platform… so the hand over must happen at a head of state level or at least a minister who is properly designated by the president of the United States of America,” he said.
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South Africa’s strained relations with the US
Lamola said South Africa has decided to treat the US the same way it has been treated.
“Now that they have assigned a chargé d’affaires, we have said the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) has an equivalent official, hence we have agreed that we will do the handover. We will do it at Dirco’s offices any time on Monday and arrangements will be made on an appropriate date when they can come and we do the handover of everything.
“As Dirco we are very much ready, we are prepared,” he said.
Lamola said he believes this will not further strain South Africa’s relations with the US.
“This cannot strain relations because we are doing this at an appropriate level because a charge d’affaires is at a level of an official ambassador who will receive, and we are not going to show any disrespect to the US,” he said.
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