4 February 2019

The SACP strongly condemns the unwarranted and condescending attitude by the embassies of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland towards South Africa and our highest executive state institution, the Presidency. The SACP welcomes the statement by the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, Dirco, in expressing strong displeasure at the joint memorandum by embassies of these countries issued recently in the form of a communiqué to the South African Presidency.

The SACP calls upon all these embassies, their ambassadors and political capitals to immediately stop their imperialist interference in our country, withdraw their offensively extra-territorial memo and unconditionally apologise to the people of South Africa. As South Africans we are perfectly capable of dealing with our own problems and challenges and we need no patronising lectures or supervision, especially from embassies whose countries have a notorious history of promoting bloodshed, corruption, human rights violations and destabilisation in other countries.

The SACP particularly and strongly condemns the US embassy for this provocative and disrespectful behaviour. Our government has not used such methods to attack the US, a country whose governments have hitherto been involved in imperialist destabilisation methods in other countries, including inhumane separation of Latin American children from their parents whilst seeking refuge, and a country whose current government is pursuing intentions to build inhumane walls against other peoples of the world.

Not only does the conduct displayed by the imperialist embassies violate all international diplomatic protocols as pointed out by Dirco, but is deeply offensive and an attack on our national sovereignty. Some of these countries have in the past used their embassies as the frontline in their offensive actions in destabilising many developing countries.

In fact among the companies implicated in the corruption of corporate state capture, including perversion of state institutions in our country, are multinational corporations headquartered in the countries whose embassies signed the hypocritical memo claiming to be concerned about corruption. To list but a few, McKinsey & Company is headquartered in New York while Bain & Company is headquartered in Boston, both in the US; Bell Pottinger hailed from London, the UK, as its headquarters; KPMG is headquartered in Amstelveen, the Netherlands; while SAP is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany.

It is also a fact that for decades Switzerland has been the global capital for bank accounts set up by dictators hiding looted monies intended for their citizens, not least from our very own African continent. All these countries have no moral standing whatsoever or any record to speak of when it comes to the matters they are seeking to educate us on.

South Africa has not used such offensive tactics to express its opinions on how the French government has for instance unleashed repressive violence and strong armed tactics to suppress the demonstrations by the so-called yellow vests. Nor have we been tempted to embark on reckless commentary on the political and economic confusion engulfing the UK in the wake of Brexit.

South Africa needs no such patronising communiqué since we have already, and for that matter on our own as a country, put in place very important measures to deal with corruption. This national effort is led by President Cyril Ramaphosa himself.

ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP

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