By King’s Office Correspondents
Following his ascension to the presidency on Wednesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is poised to strengthen the current bilateral, trade and cooperation ties with Eswatini.
One of the first tasks for the new SA government is to renew the Joint Bilateral Commission for Cooperation, which speaks to most areas of cooperation. It was signed in 2004 and has elapsed.
According to various trade data sources, South Africa is not only Eswatini’s biggest trading partner, accounting for about 80 per cent of imports and 70 per cent of exports to our neighbours, but it is also a co-member of several trading blocs,
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such as the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), which allows duty-free movement of goods with a common external tariff applied to goods entering any of the countries from outside the SACU pool.
SACU accrues a significant financial injection to the national budget, with a recent receipt of about E11 billion making a major impact on the local economy.
We are also members of, among others, the Southern African Development Community (SADC): the Protocol on Trade in Goods and Trade in Services;
the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA); the EFTA-SACU Free Trade Agreement (FTA); the Economic Partnership Agreement between the SADC EPA States and the European Union and its Member States; the SACU-India PTA;
the SADC-EAC-COMESA Tripartite FTA and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Politically, a long history of cooperation between the two nations dates back to the establishment of High Commissions in Pretoria and Mbabane following the end of apartheid in 1994.
The kingdom also accepts South African currency as legal tender, with the lilangeni pegged to the SA Rand (ZAR).
In June 1993, South Africa and the Kingdom signed a judicial agreement that allowed South African judges, magistrates, and prosecutors to serve in Eswatini courts.
South Africa also agreed to provide training for Swazi court personnel.
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As active development partners, one of the fruits of this partnership was the construction of one of the biggest water encatchments in the kingdom, the Maguga Dam in the Hhohho region, which benefits farmers downstream.
The two countries occasionally engage in fighting cross-border crime back-to-back and crime suspects who cross the border to either of the two neighbouring countries are returned to be tried by the courts of law under extradition treaties.
There are also reportedly four million emaSwati living in South Africa as a result of circumstantial borders drawn up during the colonial era.
This figure represents more than twice the population of Eswatini. The Swati-South Africans still pay tribute to the Swati kings and attend the kingdom’s annual cultural events.
