PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has played down the row over the United States’ delay in issuing a visa to mining boss Tokyo Sexwale, saying it was probably just an administrative glitch.
Sexwale, a former premier of Gauteng, went public on the matter on Wednesday, suggesting that the US government might still be listing the African National Congress as a terrorist organisation.
This was after a visa delay kept him from attending Thursday’s listing of Gold Fields on the New York Stock Exchange. Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who has already raised the matter with the US government, has described it as ”really unfortunate”.
Speaking to journalists at Tuynhuys on Friday morning, Mbeki said Sexwale has been affected by an ”old regulation”.
”It did indeed affect us a long time ago. I remember that we had to get our visas specially cleared in Washington, but that was a long time ago. And the practice stopped: I’d even forgotten that such a thing used to happen.
However, Dlamini-Zuma had started discussions with the US government on it, and he was quite sure it would be sorted out.
”I just suspect that it’s some administrative glitch or something that has remained in their books. In the atmosphere after September 11 maybe that kind of thing sort of popped up again,” he said.
”I wouldn’t imagine that the US government would want to place restrictions on the entry of a Nelson Mandela into the United States, because that’s what it means.”
Zuma said at Tuynhuys that the South African ambassador to Washington, Sheila Sisulu, had taken the matter up. Dlamini-Zuma said she had spoken to the US ambassador in South Africa Cameron Hume, and had tried to speak to her counterpart in the US.
She had so only been able to contact the deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa.
”They have to sort it out, the ball is in their court,” she said.
Sexwale, chief executive of Mvelaphanda Holdings and a director of Gold Fields, had sought the visa in order to host Mandela on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday afternoon. During the apartheid years, Sexwale served a prison term of 13 years for an attack on two policemen while smuggling arms for the ANC.
The US embassy on Wednesday denied that the ANC appeared on any list of terrorist organisations.
Representative Judy Moon said anyone convicted of a serious crime required a waiver from Washington in terms of US law. But it had been ”administratively impossible” to issue Sexwale’s visa in time, she said. – Sapa