The government is mulling countermeasures after South Africa refused to rescind its unilateral renaming of the nation’s representative office, a source said yesterday.
The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation Web site on Sunday listed the Taipei Liaison Office as the Taipei Commercial Office in line with Pretoria’s move to distance itself from Taiwan in China’s favor.
Commenting on condition of anonymity, an official with knowledge of the matter said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would not limit Taiwan’s response to the already-issued protests and condemnations.
Photo: Yang Cheng-yu, Taipei Times
The ministry is preparing to impose stricter visa rules for travelers from South Africa, suspend bilateral exchanges, and enforce retaliatory economic and trade measures, the official said.
The dispute started last year when South Africa sought to downgrade Taiwan’s representative office by categorizing it as a trade office and ordering the office to relocate from Pretoria to Johannesburg.
South Africa in January reiterated its demands and set a deadline of the end of this month for compliance without waiting to conclude then-ongoing diplomatic negotiations, the official said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has asked officials to formulate a response following South Africa’s renaming of the office, they said.
South Africa’s support for China’s international policies has resulted in increased diplomatic isolation and has antagonized Western nations, the official said.
The South African government’s handling of foreign and domestic affairs sparked discontent in the G7 and has harmed the nation’s image as a successful post-apartheid democratic state, they said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expelled the South African ambassador to the US in a sign of a growing rift between the two nations, the official said, adding that the US had cut aid to South Africa.
Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate have denounced South Africa’s unilateral name change of the representative office, they said.
Removing South Africa from the African Growth and Opportunity Act is one of the measures being discussed in the US, the official said.
Pretoria faces mounting domestic problems due to a tepid economy and social strife, despite supposedly receiving perks from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, they said.
“It is regrettable that former president Nelson Mandela’s spirit of struggling for freedom has been ignored, leaving [South Africa’s] democracy a shell of its former self,” the official said.
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