Taipei claims that South Africa’s demand is due to increasing pressure from China
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said the South African government has given Taipei until the end of March to relocate its unofficial embassy from the country’s capital, Pretoria.
In a statement announcing the move on Sunday, the ministry cited Chinese pressure as the reason for South Africa’s decision.
South Africa severed political and diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1997 over Beijing’s claims that the self-governing island is part of Chinese territory. Regardless, Taiwan and South Africa have maintained what the two governments call liaison offices in each other’s capitals.
Currently, Taiwan has 12 formal diplomatic partners, with South Africa’s neighbor, Eswatini, being the only African country that is an ally of Taipei.
Pretoria previously made a request last year for the Taipei Liaison Office (TLO) to be moved to Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic hub, and renamed the ‘Trade Office’. The rebranding will be “a true reflection of the non-political and non-diplomatic nature of the relationship between the Republic of South Africa and Taiwan,” the African state explained in October, giving the island province a deadline of the end of that month.
Taiwan’s foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung, announced that the country had no plans of moving the representative office, accusing South Africa of violating the nearly three-decade agreement between Taipei and Pretoria.
On Sunday, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it had received another letter from South Africa in late January demanding that the TLO leave Pretoria by the end of March.
According to the ministry’s statement, as cited by the Taiwanese government-owned Central News Agency, the rising demand “shows that China’s pressure on Taiwan in South Africa has intensified.”
Beijing and Pretoria are both members of the BRICS Group, along with Brazil, Russia, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia.
The Chinese government opened its embassy in South Africa in 1998, a year after Pretoria broke off formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. In 2023, China became South Africa’s largest trading partner after overtaking the EU.
