Can South Africa’s President Fix His Bilateral Relationship with Washington?

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will arrive in Washington this week as part of a last-ditch effort to salvage what is left of his country’s bilateral relationship with the United States and head off what are expected to be a new and even harsher set of policies, including sanctions, that could do lasting harm to South Africa’s already struggling economy. Ramaphosa has been angling for a meeting with Trump since the first weeks of the administration when the U.S. president suspended all foreign assistance to South Africa under an executive order (EO) that accused the African National Congress–led government of “actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” as well as “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.”

Since the EO, relations have continued on a steady decline through Trump’s first 100 days, with South Africa’s ambassador to Washington being declared persona non grata after his accusation that the Trump administration reflected a “white supremacist” viewpoint. Now, Trump is making good on his promise to resettle Afrikaner landowners in the United States. The first group of 50 white “refugees” arrived in the United States last week at the same time that the White House directed all U.S. agencies and departments to suspend their work with South Africa’s G20 conference organizers. This follows Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s boycott of a G20 ministerial meeting in Pretoria in March.

Q1: Given the deleterious state of relations, what does President Ramaphosa hope to achieve in coming to Washington?

A1: There has been a belief in Pretoria that President Trump is simply being fed bad information about South Africa’s policies and positions by people around him who either don’t understand them or are willfully misrepresenting them to advance a parochial agenda. As such, Ramaphosa seems to be coming under the misguided notion that much of what has angered Washington can simply be explained away. Initially, Ramaphosa hoped to come to cut a bilateral trade deal, like other world leaders are already doing, to avoid the promised 30 percent tariff that Trump imposed and then suspended. South Africa is particularly vulnerable when it comes to its automobile and citrus exports to the United States, which the country’s business association contends could cost as many as 35,000 farm jobs. As tribute, Ramaphosa will reportedly offer Trump a “comprehensive trade deal . . . that traverses a variety of fields, including agriculture, gas, automotive, minerals and reciprocals . . . giving the [United States] greater access to the South African market.” However, given the sheer variety of transgressions South Africa has been accused of committing, preferential access to South Africa’s still relatively modest internal market seems insufficient to mollify a Trump administration seemingly bent on using this fracas as a message to other developing countries considering testing Trump’s resolve.

Q2: What are the best-case and worst-case outcomes of this visit?

A2: The best outcome for Ramaphosa would be a sort of diplomatic truce that avoids a new round of embarrassing and painful moves from Washington. That appears highly unlikely. At a minimum, Trump appears set to boycott the South African G20 summit this November in Johannesburg. At its worst, we are likely to see Congress act to put into law Trump’s earlier executive order, making a near-term thaw in relations next to impossible without an across-the-border reversal of many, if not all, of Pretoria’s policies Washington finds most irksome. It could also include a more direct targeting of South African officials and the economy. That could include targeted sanctions on African National Congress (ANC) officials responsible for what Trump sees as racially discriminatory legislation, as well as trade sanctions that go beyond mere tariffs, along with visa restrictions that inhibit routine business travel.

Q3: What issues does the Trump administration have with South Africa?

A3: The bigger issue for Ramaphosa is the number and variety of Trump’s constituencies that have taken exception with South Africa’s policies. Rebutting one might have been possible but disarming all of Pretoria’s detractors inside the White House seems unlikely.

First are those closest to the president, like Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, who has championed the cause of South Africa’s Afrikaner minority and perpetuated the accusation of a “white genocide” occurring. Next is Elon Musk, another influential voice in close proximity to President Trump, whom Ramaphosa will have to disarm. Musk is believed to have weighed in with Trump over restrictions under South African law being applied to his request for a Starlink license in the country. Under long-standing legislation, foreign telecommunications investors are required to offer a 30 percent ownership stake to a historically disadvantaged group, under the terms of long-standing Black Economic Empowerment laws, which Musk believes have been unfairly applied to him over his criticism of government policies.

Meanwhile sitting in the Oval Office when Ramaphosa visits will be Secretary Rubio who has argued that South Africa is intentionally advancing an anti-American, globalist agenda by siding with Russia, China, and Iran against a variety of U.S. strategic interests, while also working with them to strengthen and expand the BRICS alliance to undermine the dollar’s preeminence in global markets. And finally, there is President Trump’s strong pro-Israel constituency, which has taken aim at South Africa’s support for Hamas and its lawsuit at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinian civilians.

Disarming or making sufficient concessions to satisfy even one of these groups would be nearly impossible for Ramaphosa, as movement on any of these issues would represent a fundamental betrayal of many of the core tenets of ANC policy. Given the ANC’s precarious domestic political fortunes, any concessions could be tantamount to political suicide at home.

Q4: How difficult will it be for Ramaphosa to reverse or suspend this downward spiral of relations?

A4: It seems next to impossible at this stage for Ramaphosa to avoid a worst-case scenario in his meeting with Trump. In South Africa, commentators are arguing, “It is now too little, too late for President Cyril Ramaphosa to try to rebut the false narrative of the ill-treatment of the Afrikaner minority group . . . As Ramaphosa walks into a perfect storm in the White House, he should expect the Zelensky-style treatment.” But this view suggests that Trump himself has already decided on a course of action. But Trump has shown time and again that he is willing to make last-minute adjustments, and even full reversals, to his policy pronouncements if he feels that he can extract the right concessions.

Ironically, the power to alter the trajectory of relations rests with Ramaphosa, and he should only be coming to Washington if he is fully prepared to concede on the long-held policy positions that have been central to the ANC’s foreign policy since coming to power in 1994. That, however, seems equally unlikely. As relations with Washington began their steady decline, starting under the Biden administration when Pretoria violated U.S. sanctions to sell Russia weapons for their invasion of Ukraine, ANC leaders have shown a complete unwillingness to reconsider long-held policies and relationships, even when the consequences were well understood. Instead, South African officials have typically responded with history lessons of their apartheid struggle to explain and justify positions that today are widely seen as intolerable, anachronistic, and self-defeating, or what one South African commentator called “a schizophrenia between looking backwards and trying to maneuver forwards.” Before he crosses the threshold of the Oval Office, President Ramaphosa would do well to recall that President Trump is no great student of history, nor is he welcoming of lessons.

Cameron Hudson is a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.