Hersov: There are two South Africas — it’s time Washington started treating them differently

Key topics:

• Risk of AGOA loss for SA under ANC policy direction

• Sakeliga proposes subnational certification for US market access

• Critique of ANC policies; call for pro-trade, property rights reform

By Rob Hersov

“AGOA or not to AGOA. That is the question”

South Africa is facing a moment of truth. 

Not another ANC press conference. Not another empty  spineless Cyuril “family meeting”. Not another useless ANC minister blaming apartheid, colonialism, capitalism, the weather, the West, Jan van Riebeeck, me, or anyone else for this catastrophe.

This time, the question is brutally simple: AGOA or not to AGOA?

And the answer, if we continue under the ANC’s suicidal economic ideology, is equally simple: no AGOA.

For years, South Africa has enjoyed preferential access to the American market through the African Growth and Opportunity Act. AGOA has helped exporters, farmers, manufacturers, workers, and entire communities. It has supported real jobs in the real economy. Not ANC tenderpreneur jobs. Not useless ANC cadre-deployment jobs. Real jobs, sold into the world’s largest economy.

But the ANC has treated this privilege with the arrogance of a regime that thinks consequences are for other people. It has pushed race-based controls, threatened property rights, flirted with hostile powers, nationalised healthcare by another name, and built an economy around punishment and patronage rather than growth, freedom and excellence.

The Americans are not stupid. They can read legislation. They can see when a country is moving from a rules-based, pro-market, pro-Western framework towards racial engineering, state control and ideological hostility.

So let us stop pretending. South Africa is close to losing its privileged trade position with the United States. AGOA has been extended only temporarily, and Washington is reviewing how it should be modernised. South Africa will not survive a serious merit-based review focused on property rights, market freedom, labour practices, geopolitical alignment and race-based economic coercion.

The ANC will, as usual, blame everyone else. They will scream about sovereignty, mutter about imperialism, fly business class to Washington to “engage stakeholders”, and issue statements full of stale diplomatic porridge. None of that will save a single job.

What Russell Lamberti and Sakeliga have put on the table is therefore not merely clever. It is necessary – a practical, pro-business escape route from ANC policy. Sakeliga’s formal USTR submission identifies AGOA’s core flaw, that it is a blunt country-level instrument. South Africa is either in or out, regardless of whether individual producers, companies, towns or provinces are aligned with American interests.

That is madness.

In plain English, the Sakeliga solution is subnational and entity-level differentiation. Washington should not treat every South African business, town, and province as if it is identical to the corrupt and evil Luthuli House. Why should an exporter in a well-run province, or a company that rejects race-based interference, be punished for the ANC’s reckless  and moronic ideology?

This proposal creates a path for South African entities to say, clearly and publicly: we are US-friendly, rules-based, non-racial, pro-property rights and pro-trade. We reject racial classification, expropriation without compensation, political intimidation and chants that target minorities. We want to trade, build, employ and compete.

That is not racism. That is the opposite of racism.

The ANC and its echo chamber (News24 etc al) will smear this immediately. They will say it is divisive, anti-South African, foreign interference and “for whites”, because that is what they say whenever anyone challenges their racial patronage machine.

I say – nonsense. I say – Voetsek ANC!

A non-racial framework that allows any business, municipality, or province to qualify by meeting clear standards is not racist. A 100% black-owned company that rejects BEE coercion should qualify. A white-owned company captured by ANC ideology should not. The test is not skin colour. The test is conduct:, simply are you US-friendly or US-hostile?

This proposal is not asking America to punish South Africa. That punishment is already being prepared because the ANC has made South Africa increasingly uninvestable and unreliable. The point is relief: a lifeboat before the ANC sinks yet another ship.

And make no mistake: our ship is taking water.

We already see pressure building around forced-labour concerns, the Employment Equity Act, and the racialisation of the economy. The ANC may think it can bluff its way through. It cannot. America has changed. The tolerance for free-riding and anti-Western rhetoric has collapsed. South Africa is not entitled to AGOA. It must deserve AGOA.

At the moment, under the ANC, we do not.

That is why this proposal matters. Companies can publicly distance themselves from race-based policies by complying only to the legal minimum, under protest. Provinces and municipalities can align with American expectations – no expropriation without compensation, no tolerance for hate speech, no hostility to investors, no ideological games with livelihoods.

This is not complicated. It is common sense.

Sakeliga’s submission makes the case even stronger. It says compliant producers and manufacturers could be certified by approved private-sector bodies at no cost to the U.S. government. Provinces, municipalities, and economic zones could be assessed where governance conditions exist. No new AGOA standards are needed – the innovation is applying existing standards more precisely — rewarding reformers and pressuring wreckers.

And the mechanics are not science fiction. The proposal can use existing U.S. customs plumbing, namely the Automated Commercial Environment, Special Program Indicators, and a simple registry lookup returning eligible or not eligible. No new customs platform. No new customs data fields. No new border circus. No ANC permission slip.

If a business is US-friendly, why should it be treated as US-hostile? If a province is pro-trade, pro-property, and pro-investment, why should it be lumped together with ANC failure? If a municipality wants to protect exporters, why should it be dragged down by  idiotic ANC ministers more interested in ideology than prosperity?

This matters especially for actual exporters, for farmers, citrus growers, wine producers, manufacturers, vehicle exporters, boat builders, and small businesses that get slammed when Washington loses patience with Pretoria. In agriculture, farms already have producer codes and produce is traced geographically. If a province or municipality complies, a farmer may have protection through that jurisdiction. If the farmer also signs directly, he gets another layer. If both province and municipality comply too, that becomes a triple lock.

The critics will claim it is impossible. Again, nonsense. Sakeliga points to existing American precedents: entity lists, targeted import restrictions, product-specific withdrawals, and company-specific tariff treatment. The bureaucracy can be light. The system can be self-funded. Most importantly, it does not require ANC permission, because if it did, the ANC would strangle it in the crib.

The old model was simple: Washington deals with Pretoria, Pretoria speaks for South Africa, and everyone else pays for Pretoria’s failures. That model is dead. Pretoria no longer speaks for the productive economy: entrepreneurs keeping the lights on with generators, farmers feeding the country while being vilified, or exporters earning foreign currency despite collapsing ports and railways.

Pretoria speaks for the ANC. And the ANC increasingly speaks only for itself and its greedy Black Elite Enrichment network.

So, yes, this is a political fight. It is also an economic fight, a moral fight, and a fight for South Africa’s productive citizens. Ons sal baklei! Every opposition party that claims to care about jobs should endorse this proposal. The DA, FF+, IFP, PA, ACDP and every serious provincial and municipal leader should say where they stand. Do they stand with exporters and workers, or with moronic and destructive ANC ideology?

Businesses must also decide. Too many corporates in South Africa whisper in private and grovel in public. They complain behind closed doors, then issue bland statements about transformation while the walls close in. They use ANC stooges like Martin Kingston as their mouthpiece. That era must end. If you want AGOA access, if you want investment, if you want American partners to believe you are not part of the problem, then say so.

Stand up and be counted, South African corporates. For once.

The genius of the Sakeliga proposal is that it turns the debate around. The ANC wants everyone complicit: business silent, provinces obedient and municipalities dependent. Subnational differentiation breaks that spell. It says there is another South Africa: a South Africa of work, trade, property rights, non-racialism and Western alignment. A South Africa that refuses to be dragged into poverty by racial nationalists and socialist dreamers.

That South Africa deserves a channel to the world.

AGOA is not a gift to politicians. It is a trade instrument that should benefit people who produce, employ and export. If the ANC chooses hostility, then let the consequences fall on the ANC. Do not punish the businesses and communities trying to build a future despite the ANC. Otherwise, uncertainty simply pushes orders away from Africa — often straight back to China.

The choice before us is not really AGOA or not to AGOA. It is whether South Africa allows the ANC, a failed and corrupt liberation movement ,to define the entire country in the eyes of the world, or whether the productive, non-racial, pro-growth South Africa finally steps forward and says – we are not them.

We are not the ANC. We are not hostile to America. We are not anti-business. We are not anti-property. We are not trapped in the ANC racial obsessions of the past. We want trade, jobs, investment and dignity.

Because if we do nothing, the ANC will do what it always does. It will posture, bluster, deny, blame, and destroy. The ANC will continue to break so it can steal. Then ordinary South Africans will pay the bill.

AGOA or not to AGOA? That is the question.

My answer is clear: AGOA for South Africans who believe in freedom, trade, property rights, and non-racialism. Not AGOA for the ANC’s wrecking ball.

Let businesses stand up (for once). Let provinces stand up. Let municipalities stand up. And let the ANC explain why it wants everyone else dragged down with it.

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