SA to roll out red carpet for China’s Xi Jinping ahead of Brics summit

SA is set to roll out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping who will meet President Cyril Ramaphosa on a state visit this month.

Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said during the 15th Brics summit taking place in Johannesburg, Ramaphosa and his Chinese counterpart will meet to further strengthen relations between their countries.

“Over and above the official talks that are aimed at strengthening bilateral relations with China, there will be a number of memoranda of agreements that will be signed on that day,” Magwenya said on Thursday.

Xi will undertake a state visit to the Union Buildings on August 23 while the much-anticipated summit will take place at the Sandton Convention Centre from August 22-24.

This is not Xi's first visit to SA. Shortly after Ramaphosa took office in 2018 Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, undertook a state visit to Pretoria.

The upcoming visit is significant because China is South Africa's largest trading partner and SA is China's largest trading partner in Africa. 

The visit comes at a time when there are geopolitical shifts amid the war between Russia and Ukraine as well as tensions between New Delhi (India) and Beijing after a clash on the disputed Himalayan border in 2020 in which 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed.

The visit comes after Ramaphosa held talks with Xi in June where it was thought he reached out to Xi for help with the conundrum over Russian President Vladimir Putin's mooted trip to SA to attend the summit. If he had come, SA would have been obliged to arrest him to comply with an International Criminal Court warrant of arrest against Putin for alleged war crimes.    

After a “mutual agreement” between Ramaphosa and Putin, the latter said he would not attend the summit in person.  

Russia will instead be represented by foreign minister Sergei Lavrov while Putin will take part virtually.

TimesLIVE