For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Lumkile Nkomfe.

Making headlines: Ramaphosa appeals for Agoa’s renewal, encourages US to collaborate with S Africa; Ramaphosa urges reformed global tax rules to curb illicit financial flows; And, EFF calls for the removal of all apartheid statues, symbols in public spaces

Ramaphosa appeals for Agoa’s renewal, encourages US to collaborate with S Africa

President Cyril Ramaphosa appealed for the US’s support as he advocated for the African Growth and Opportunity Act’s renewal, encouraging greater collaboration between US companies and Africa’s universities, research institutions and training programmes, in order to jointly build the skills and innovation capacity needed for the future.

Ramaphosa was speaking during the SA-US trade and investment dialogue, in New York, where he noted that Agoa’s expiry would not only undermine the gains it made, but also remove the link to the Generalised System of Preferences, which had been so critical to many country’s exporters.

The current authorisation of Agoa is set to expire on Tuesday, making its renewal a significant topic of discussion for future US-Africa trade relations.

Ramaphosa highlighted that Agoa had been the foundation of US-Africa trade for nearly a quarter of a century.

He stated that predictable, preferential access to the US market was vital not only to South Africa but to American companies who depended on reliable imports, noting that more than 600 US companies were already invested and operating successfully in South Africa, for instance.

Ramaphosa urges reformed global tax rules to curb illicit financial flows

Meanwhile, to close the Sustainable Development Goals financing gap, Ramaphosa said the United Nations General Assembly needs faster, fairer and more comprehensive debt relief and restructuring.

He noted the need for an estimated $4-trillion annually to close the SDG financing gap.

He said a succession of crises had exposed the fragility of interconnected economies and revealed deep inequities in the capacity to respond.

He urged the need to mobilise affordable, accessible financing from a wide range of sources, calling for strengthened coordination by the UN.

He noted that beyond financial instruments, there was a need for commitments to be honoured and global rules shaped by all members, not just a few.

He also called for reforming of global tax rules to curb illicit financial flows, and urged the rechannelling of unused Special Drawing Rights to countries in need, and to scale up concessional finance through development banks.

And, EFF calls for the removal of all apartheid statues, symbols in public spaces

As part of marking that the preferred heritage of African people is not a “celebration in public spaces of genocidal colonialists and land thieves”, the Economic Freedom Fighters has introduced a motion in Parliament to remove all apartheid statues and symbols from public spaces.

The party said this included the removal of monuments that glorified the conquest of Africans such as the Voortrekker Monument, the statue of Louis Botha in front of the Parliament of South Africa, and the monuments of Paul Kruger and Jan Van Riebeek across the nation.

The EFF noted that it was confident that all these symbols, designed to perpetuate the idea of the supremacy of white supremacists, would be removed through legislative mechanisms from public spaces, and put in a designated area where they can be observed and admonished as part of a history that will never again be repeated.

The EFF claimed that what should have been a day of deep reflection on the history of dispossession, cultural resistance, and the restoration of African dignity, had been stripped of its radical meaning.

The party pointed out that the work had already begun in the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature which had resolved to change the names of Kruger National Park and Kruger International Airport, which the party said were currently named after a “vicious racist” who sits as the pride of Afrikaner exceptionalism, invasion and land theft.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

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