SOUTH AFRICA on Thursday berated the United States for delaying the issuing of visas to African National Congress (ANC) members.
”It is really unfortunate and we reject it with the contempt it deserves,” Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told reporters in Cape Town.
Describing the situation as incredible, she said the issue had been raised ”quite sharply” with the US.
Politician-turned-businessman Tokyo Sexwale went public on the matter on Wednesday, suggesting that the US government might still be listing the ANC 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.
Expressing his frustration, Sexwale said on Thursday: ”I am still without a visa, sitting here in Johannesburg”.
He was to have hosted former president Nelson Mandela on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the afternoon.
Sexwale, a former Gauteng premier, is chief executive of Mvelaphanda Holdings and a director of Gold Fields.
During the apartheid years, he served a prison term of 13 years for an attack on two policemen while smuggling arms for the ANC.
US embassy representative Judy Moon reportedly denied on Wednesday that the ANC appeared on any list of terrorist organisations.
She added: ”Anyone who was convicted of a serious crime requires a waiver from Washington in terms of US law. But granting a waiver for members of the ANC who have legitimate reasons as to why they ended up in jail is usually a formality”.
It had been ”administratively impossible” to issue Sexwale’s visa in time, she said. Sapa could not reach Moon on Thursday for comment.
ANC representative Smuts Ngonyama said ANC members had encountered delays in obtaining US visas since 1994.
”We have been suffering in silence,” he said.
He said senior figures who had been treated this way included foreign affairs portfolio committee chairman Pallo Jordan.
”It is unacceptable that ANC members who spent years in apartheid prisons for legitimate actions against an unjust system should be victimised in this manner,” he said.
Sexwale said on Thursday: ”It is really disappointing that we require a waiver for having fought apartheid, which the world had declared a crime against humanity.”
He said he was awaiting advice from his legal team.
At a briefing on the inaugural summit of the African Union, Dlamini-Zuma said: ”We have raised the matter quite sharply with our American colleagues, and we hope they will look at it and hopefully do something about it.”
It appeared that ANC members travelling to the US had for some time been granted waivers without being aware of this, Dlamini-Zuma said.
The US expanded the screening of visitors after last year’s September 11 terrorist attacks. An increase in the number of people being scrutinised apparently brought the visa delays that affected ANC members.
Dlamini-Zuma said she raised the issue with the US Ambassador to South Africa Cameron Hume on Wednesday night. South Africa’s envoy in Washington, Sheila Sisulu, would monitor progress in resolving the matter.
Hume understood her concerns and described the situation as regrettable, the minister said.
”They will try and work at it. But, obviously, it seems that it needs a lot of working,” he said.
This would be a long process that would also involve the US Congress. Meanwhile, the US would seek to use the current exemption process in such a way that delays were avoided, Dlamini-Zuma said.
The ANC said in a statement the treatment its members was getting from the US flew in the face of the good relations between the two countries.
”The US government should apologise to Tokyo Sexwale,” the ANC said. – Sapa