Cyril backs China on Huawei
● President Cyril Ramaphosa has thrown SA’s weight behind China in its trade war with the US.
Meeting his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Ramaphosa pledged SA’s support for Chinese mobile giant Huawei.
US sanctions against Huawei could threaten the company’s operations around the world, but on Friday President Donald Trump appeared to back down.
Ramaphosa’s stand follows a plea by SA’s four big telecommunications companies. The CEOs of Cell C, MTN, Vodacom and Telkom wrote to Ramaphosa on June 7, asking for his help in dealing with the repercussions of an executive order signed by Trump against Huawei.
They said Trump’s original blacklisting of Huawei would have had devastating consequences for the telecommunication sector and would jeopardise a R100bn investment in infrastructure.
Shameel Joosub of Vodacom, Sipho Maseko of Telkom, Godfrey Motsa of MTN and Cell C’s Douglas Stevenson are said to have asked for Ramaphosa’s intervention, telling him the blacklisting would impede efforts to roll out a 5G network and affect SA’s existing 3G and 4G networks.
Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Khusela Diko, said the president told Xi that Huawei was important to SA’s telecoms.
A spokesperson for communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams said the CEOs “requested government’s intervention to prevent any unintended consequences of the [US] executive order”.
A spokesperson for Huawei SA said the company would bring service and experience to SA for the next-generation mobile network.
The US has led a campaign to discredit Huawei and to curtail its influence in telecommunications. It said China would use 5G to spy on people and governments.
Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou is under house arrest in Canada, fighting extradition to the US. The US wants to charge her with breaking US sanctions on Iran.
Huawei is the world’s largest supplier of mobile phones and makes equipment
US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei US President Donald Trump backtracking on his ban on Huawei
that is integral to the operations of all four South African mobile-phone companies.
“Huawei provides a strong backbone to our telecommunication sector and is the frontrunner in 5G network,” said Diko. “The advancements made in that sector are largely because of the investment Huawei made in SA.
“The president expressed his concern at any efforts to curtail the efforts of Huawei to deliver a comprehensive, and what we believe to be an advanced solution in the telecommunication space.”
Ramaphosa was accompanied by international relations minister Naledi Pandor and finance minister Tito Mboweni to his meeting with Xi, who brought a high-powered delegation of ministers and members of China’s politburo.
Diko said Ramaphosa agreed with Xi’s condemnation of protectionism and unilateralism, and the two had found common ground on the need to resist bullying — a remark seen as a direct criticism of Trump.
At a later meeting, Xi and Trump agreed to resume trade talks, with the US president appearing to backtrack on a ban on the sale of American equipment to Huawei.
“US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei,” Trump said, explaining that he wanted to help American technology companies that had complained about the ban. Trade wars are high on the G20 agenda. Speaking on the sidelines of the G20 conference, Pandor said SA and other emerging economies were caught in the crossfire of the US-China trade conflict.
“There’s concern ... that the smaller economies may be affected negatively if matters are not resolved speedily and in line with broad international agreements,” she said.
Pandor said SA used the summit to express its belief that the world had done better with multilateralism, a position encouraged by China.
Ramaphosa also sought a meeting in Osaka with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who again said Moscow was ready to help SA with its nuclear programme.
Diko said Ramaphosa reaffirmed that SA would roll out nuclear power as part of its energy mix at a pace and scale that it could afford.