Taipei missed a March deadline to move its representative office from Pretoria as the two sides were negotiating a new deal
South Africa is finalizing the relocation of Taiwan’s unofficial embassy from the country’s capital Pretoria to Johannesburg, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola has revealed.
South Africa officially ended its diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1997, and recently, the department gazetted a notice for the relocation of the office from Pretoria to Johannesburg.
Lamola confirmed that a notice has been gazetted for the transition of the Taiwan office, which will now be rebranded as the Taiwan Commercial Office in Johannesburg, adding that the move from Pretoria to Johannesburg has become a done deal.
The latest relocation deadline was set for March 31; however, it was not met due to ongoing negotiations between the two countries regarding the terms of the agreement.
Early this year, IOL reported that the South African government had initially ordered Taiwan to move its Pretoria office to Johannesburg in October 2024, but talks between the sides resulted in a new date of the end of March being set.
”We consider it done. We have gazetted the relocation to the City of Johannesburg. We have stated the reasons because our relations with Taiwan are at a commercial level and in trade. This is not just a South African phenomenon in many capitals across the globe; Taiwan is the commercial city – it is not some South African exceptionalism,” the minister said.
The latest comes after the Taiwan government slammed Lamola for claiming that Taiwan has no representative office in the United States capital, Washington, DC, during a media briefing last Wednesday.
In a statement, the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Lamola of making ‘false’ claims to justify South Africa’s unilateral abandonment of a 1997 bilateral agreement that aimed to downgrade Taiwan’s representative office.
”The Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly refutes Minister Lamola’s claims, which not only contradicted reality but also highlighted South Africa’s grave lack of knowledge and misunderstanding of the international situation,” the ministry said.
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