Although scores of countries worldwide have dropped official recognition of Taiwan in favor of Communist China since the 1970s, many of them, including the United States, have given the island nation informal diplomatic status with a "liaison office" in their respective capitals.
Last week, more than 27 years after South Africa formally recognized China and began the unofficial relationship with Taiwan, the government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa suddenly ordered the Taipei Liaison Office to leave the capital city of Pretoria before the end of March.
To add insult to injury, the Ramaphosa government sought to rename the liaison office a "trade office" and thus downgrade its status.
Taiwan fired back and made clear there was no way it would go along with what they charged was a clear violation of the bilateral agreement it signed with South Africa in 1998.
"The Taiwan government remains steadfast in its refusal to accept the South African government's unilateral violation of their bilateral agreement," declared a statement from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Friends of Taiwan in Congress also joined in the denunciation of South Africa's unexpected move, and several charged that China's growing presence in Africa is behind it.
"The South African government needs to stop yielding to the Chinese Communist Party's puppeteering," Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., the first Korean American to serve in Congress and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, posted on X. "I stand with Taiwan against the CCP's fearmongering and coercion."
Also weighing in against South Africa were Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. To protest the move against Taiwan, Curz announced he would not attend an upcoming G-20 meeting in South Africa.
South Africa was demanding the relocating of the de facto embassy, charged House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa Chair Chris Smith, R-N.J., "at the apparent behest of the CCP government and in apparent violation of its agreement with democratic Taiwan."
Taiwanese officials who spoke to Newsmax expressed a particular sadness that South Africa would turn on it after decades of friendship. Taiwan, they noted, had called for the release of Nelson Mandela during the African National Congress leader's imprisonment under the former apartheid government from 1962-90.
The day after Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994, he met with the president and foreign minister of Taiwan and made clear that while he intended to recognize mainland China, he was not going to abandon a loyal friend who had become his country's sixth-largest trading partner and a major investor.
Taiwan had also donated $10 million to Mandela's African National Congress in its first election campaign in 1993.
Mandela felt strongly, recalled his former Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad: "You can't dump friends after receiving so much assistance from them." So he tried to maintain a "two-China policy" until 1998, when China in no uncertain terms insisted that he break off relations with Taiwan and recognize only the Communist regime in Beijing as the "one China." Mandela said at the time he "agonized over" the decision, but eventually did it.
Now, the present government in South Africa has gone much further in pleasing China and abandoning Taiwan.
And many of Taiwan's friends in the U.S. don't like it.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.