By Musa Mdluli

MBABANE:Ronald Lamola, the South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation has maintained that, eSwatini’s diplomatic ally-Taiwan will never be allowed to have an Embassy or Office in the capital city-Pretoria.

Minister Lamola addressed a press conference on Wednesday where he clarified why Taiwan was ordered to move it’s Office from Pretoria, he said “only official or recognized countries are allowed to have Embassies” in the capital city. Lamola further said it’s not only South Africa as even the United States did not allow Taiwan to have an Embassy in Washington, DC.

“The issue of the relocation of the Taiwan Liaison Office, from our side, we consider it done because we have gazetted its relocation to the city of Johannesburg as a Commercial Liaison Office,” said the South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister.

But as reported by the Daily Maverick this week, the Taiwanese Government through it’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, blasted the South African Minister of International Relations for claiming that, Taiwan does not even have a representative Office in the United States capital-Washington, DC. 

“These claims were intended to justify South Africa’s unilateral abandonment of a 1997 bilateral agreement that would downgrade Taiwan’s representative office by renaming it the ‘Taipei Commercial Office’ and wrongly force the office to move. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs(MOFA) 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,” reads the statement in part.

Taiwan maintains diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of eSwatini but, other African countries terminated the diplomatic ties in recognition of the United Nations(UN) Resolution 2758 of 1971 that recognized the “One China Principle”.

In terms of the said UN resolution, Taiwan is regarded as a Province of China and not recognized by the UN as an independent State.