Secretary Antony J. Blinken and South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola Before Their Meeting

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good afternoon, everyone, and Ronald, thank you for this meeting. I think it's an important moment to take stock of the extraordinary and important partnership between South Africa and the United States, a partnership that works on a bilateral basis, a regional basis, and indeed a global basis. And I'm gratified that our teams have had important conversations in recent weeks.

I look forward to our own strategic dialogue and also very much look forward to the fact that we will be in effect serving together at leadership of the G20 as South Africa takes over next year and we get in line to take the handoff, and I think much important work to be done there. We had a good session with our G20 partners the other day in advance of the Brazil-hosted leaders meeting and we very much look forward to working closely with you on the many issues where South Africa and the United States together, I hope, can make progress for our people and for many, many others as well.

So very good to see you this afternoon. Look forward to the conversation.

MINISTER LAMOLA: Thank you very much. We are also very glad as South Africa that we could find time to meet with yourself to continue to strengthen the bilateral relations between the two countries. As you're aware, South Africa celebrates 30 years of democracy, shared values with the United States of America. It's a constitutional democracy, free and fair elections, and we have just emerged from them with about 10 political parties that have agreed to form a government of national unity with the priority to resolve the triple challenges of South Africa: unemployment, inequality, and poverty.

And our foreign policy will continue to be guided by human rights, constitutional principles, the national interest, solidarity and peaceful resolution of conflicts, achieving Africa Agenda 2063, engagements between the Global South and the Global North. And we are looking forward to continue to strengthen relations with the United States in terms of economic trade, and we see this in that context.

Thank you very much.