JOHANNESBURG—The leaders of Africa’s largest, most industrialized economy and the world’s greatest superpower are set to meet at the White House on Wednesday with relations between the two apparently at an all-time low.
With the South African government firmly in the camp of America’s primary geopolitical foes and accused by U.S. President Donald Trump of racially persecuting white Afrikaners, one international relations analyst said the “potential for flashpoints is ultra-high.”
Officials close to President Cyril Ramaphosa said he’s set to push for a new trade deal with Washington, with enhanced United States access to the country’s wealth of critical minerals and precious metals a “real possibility.”
But first, they said, the man credited with negotiating with apartheid’s overlords to end white minority rule in South Africa in the early 1990s will “do his best” to convince Trump there’s no “white genocide” happening in the country, as the U.S. leader has alleged on several occasions.
“If Ramaphosa manages to repair the completely broken relationship between South Africa and the United States, it will be his biggest achievement since he helped to set South Africa on the path of democracy,” said professor Susan Booysen, director of research at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, a South African think-tank.
“It’s far from an easy task, and it won’t happen over a period of days, but if there’s anyone capable of succeeding, of restoring mutual respect, it’s Cyril Ramaphosa,” she told The Epoch Times.
Yet South Africa, said Steven Friedman, professor of the Center for the Study of Democracy in Johannesburg, represents the antithesis of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda.
“South Africa entrenches some of the world’s strongest rights for members of the LGBT community. It’s pro-abortion. It promotes affirmative action and black economic empowerment,” Friedman told The Epoch Times.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, criticized by Trump and his top officials as discriminatory, are front and center in South Africa’s liberal constitution.
“South Africa is doing very bad things … Using G20 to promote ’solidarity, equality, & sustainability.' In other words: DEI and climate change. My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.”
However, should Trump “call Cyril out on this or anything else,” said Friedman, he doesn’t expect the South African president to flinch.
“I’ve known Cyril Ramaphosa since the 1970s, and I can’t recall him ever losing his temper,” said Friedman.
“He’s a diplomat and negotiator of extraordinary skill and calmness.”
Booysen said Trump’s focus is likely to be on the Ramaphosa government’s relationship with America’s adversaries.
“It’s clear that Trump despises South Africa’s friendships with Iran, China, and Russia. That means the potential for flashpoints is ultra-high,” she said.
Pretoria also backs a plan, driven by Beijing and Moscow, to forge a “New World Order” by radically restructuring global financial instruments achieved in great part through weakening the U.S. dollar, a process it calls “de-dollarization.”
In response, Trump in January threatened “100 percent tariffs” on countries “trying to replace the mighty U.S. dollar,” including South Africa and its fellow members of the BRICS economic bloc.
South Africa also supports a “Free Palestine” and is opposed to America’s key ally in the Middle East, Israel, which it accuses of being an “apartheid state” and of genocide in the ongoing Gaza war triggered by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
These included Ramaphosa’s signing of an Expropriation Act that Trump said is aimed at seizing ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.
“This act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” Trump wrote.
In addition, said the U.S. leader, “South Africa has taken 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.”
Trump wrote that the government of South Africa’s “unjust and immoral practices,” including alleged rights violations, are undermining U.S. foreign policy.
He pledged “to promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”
The department stated that Trump’s order “makes provision for refugee status” for “a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged.” It also criticized the United States’ immigration enforcement targeting those who entered the country illegally, saying “vulnerable people ... are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship.”
A few days later, in his State of the Nation speech, Ramaphosa criticized Trump’s MAGA policies.
Ramaphosa also said his administration will “work to strengthen our trade relations around the world and to leverage our strong and diverse global alliances to make our economy more resilient.”
Analysts interpreted this as the South African president’s refusal to abandon the ANC’s historical ties to Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, which supported his party’s struggle against apartheid.
Booysen said the U.S. and South Africa are accusing each other “of the same things: racism, corruption, and human rights violations.”
“Trump has launched unprecedented criticism against South Africa, of a much greater intensity than those he reserved for America’s more traditional enemies,” she said.
“[South African leaders] don’t say it in public, but Ramaphosa and his people consider Trump’s administration and the MAGA movement to be white supremacists.”
That became evident, she said, when Pretoria’s ambassador to Washington, the ANC’s Ebrahim Rasool, called the Trump administration “supremacist” during a webinar. Rubio eventually expelled Rasool over the remarks.
The bad blood boiled over last week when Trump flew 59 white Afrikaners into Washington, his officials saying the asylum seekers were fleeing racial persecution and violence at the hands of Ramaphosa’s government.
In this context, an Oval Office face-to-face between Trump and Ramaphosa looked impossible just a few days ago, said Friedman, as the animosity between Washington and Pretoria reached a head.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Rupert for comment.
“We don’t care how we got here, but we’re here,” said a senior minister in Pretoria. “And now we must hope for the best and make our minutes with Mr. Trump count.”
Commenting on Rupert’s potential involvement, Booysen said “it’s very significant” and a “sign of how low things have become” that it took the businessman’s intervention to make the meeting happen.
In the build-up to the meeting, there is no sign that South Africa intends to abandon its relationships with the likes of China, Iran, and Russia, or to reject policies disapproved by the United States.
South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ronald Lamola, told The Epoch Times: “Just as the United States, South Africa has the right to choose its own friends. We have the sovereign right to choose our own policy directions.”
Whatever the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting, said Booysen, Trump and Ramaphosa “won’t walk away as friends.”
“The best we can hope for is some pragmatism from both sides,” she said, “and for the high temperatures we’ve witnessed these past few months to drop and give way to an uneasy peace that hopefully will result in wins that benefit South Africans and Americans.”
