By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The National Assembly (NA) held an urgent debate on the United States Government’s decision to halt aid to South Africa.
On 26 February, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) issued notices to Pepfar-funded HIV organisations permanently terminating their funding. This followed Donald Trump’s executive order suspending nearly all foreign development assistance pending a review.
On Wednesday, 5 March, the US Supreme Court rejected Trump’s emergency request to freeze foreign assistance, ordering his administration to heed a lower court’s earlier order to release frozen foreign aid.
However, it was not immediately clear whether the Supreme Court’s ruling could force the Trump administration to restore all the contracts it had cancelled, and what it means for the future of USAID.
Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters sponsored the debate on this matter of national public importance.
During the debate Malema rejected President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assertion made during a Goldman Sachs conference last week that Trump “got the wrong end of the stick” with regard to South Africa’s land reform policies.
“When Donald Trump declares, and I quote, ‘bad things’ are happening in South Africa, without evidence, we must not assume that the US is misinformed, instead we must question the real intention behind such statements.
“After Trump’s remarks, the US froze foreign aid globally under the pretext of assessing alignment with his policy outlook. For South Africa, this meant Pepfar [the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief] funding of HIV/Aids response was under threat.
“The US aggression towards South Africa is nothing more than Israel’s revenge for our moral stance in support of Palestine,” said Malema.
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi said South Africa’s healthcare system was the “hardest hit” by the US funding cuts.
SA has an estimated 7.8 million people living with HIV and, of these, 5.5 million are on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. Ninety percent of these ARVs are funded by SA’s fiscus, while the remaining 10% are paid for by the Geneva-based organisation Global Fund.
Pepfar operated in 27 “high-burden districts” out of a total of 52 districts in the country, said Motsoaledi.
These 27 districts had 271,606 staff working on HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections programmes, he said.
However, he said South Africa must now stand on its own.
“Trump doesn’t owe us any cent whatsoever and for that reason we need to stand on our own. We must not waste this crisis.
“I hope, Honourable Speaker, that we did not call this session just to bash Trump — it won’t help, believe me. We are on our own,” said Motsoaledi.
DA MP Karl le Roux called the “abrupt manner” in which Pepfar was stopped “unethical and wasteful”.
“It has not allowed governments, including our own, to make contingency plans and to allocate budget to cover funding shortfalls. It has, however, taught us as South Africans that, in this post-Covid era, we will need to become more self-reliant,” he said.
uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party MP Wesley Douglas accused the Afrikaans interest group AfriForum and the union Solidarity of “lying to the West, portraying land reform as white genocide to the US Congress [and] pushing a false narrative to justify America’s economic aggression” towards SA.
International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola said, AfriForum and Solidarity “positioned themselves against the people of South Africa”.
“Our worldview is, therefore, universal and not narrow,” said Lamola, saying we are concerned with the well-being of others as our well-being is linked to theirs.
“The next conservative Administration should scale back USAID’s global footprint by, at minimum, returning to the agency’s 2019 pre–COVID–19 pandemic budget level. It should deradicalise USAID’s programs and structures and build on the conservative reforms instituted by the Trump Administration.”
“Covid-19 taught us that we must become self-reliant or face being at the mercy of rich nations in the West who proved themselves capable of acts like hoarding lifesaving vaccines and giving us Africans the leftovers,” he said.
“We must be self-sufficient to safeguard our continent’s future, but in the spirit of progressive internationalism, we will engage all, including the country that will succeed us as G20 President, the United States of America,” added Lamola.
Lamola quoted from a UB40 song: “We’ll fight for the right to be free. We will build our own society, and in our own society we will sing, sing our own song (Amandla Awethu, Awethu).
Watch Live in the video below:
Video Courtesy of Parliament.