BY GLORY EHIOGIE

The Trump administration is treating South Africa almost like a pariah, blacklisting its envoys, refusing to send top-level officials to meetings it hosts, and threatening to hit the nation with such high tariffs that its economic crisis is likely to deepen.

The latest sign of this came with the revelation by the second-biggest party in South Africa's coalition government, the Democratic Alliance (DA), that the US government had rejected President Cyril Ramaphosa's special envoy,denying him a diplomatic visa in May and refusing to recognise him as an "official interlocutor". 

Ramaphosa's spokesman accused the DA of "misinformation", but did not explicitly deny the party's claim. 

The US State Department declined to comment when contacted by newsmen, citing “visa record confidentiality”.