Foreign leaders have learned that there is a nearly fail-safe strategy to surviving an Oval Office visit: show up ready to make deals and lather praise on President Donald Trump.
But that may not work for South Africa’s president.
The Diplomatic Tightrope
Cyril Ramapophosa could be in for a tongue-lashing on Wednesday when he meets the U.S. president. His country is the rare partner on the world stage that has managed to anger nearly every faction of Trump’s party – from the MAGA acolytes fixated on South Africa’s racial politics to more traditional Republicans who believe it has chosen the wrong side in the world’s conflicts.
“Ramaphosa is walking into a buzzsaw in the Oval Office,” said Cameron Hudson, former director for African affairs on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. Hudson said he expected the visit to be an “unmitigated disaster.”
An administration insider was only slightly more hopeful. “It’s a flip of a coin,” said this person, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal administration thinking. “It could go extra well or it could make Zelenskyy’s visit look like a cakewalk,” the person said, referring to the February visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, when he was publicly picked apart by Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Political Strains and Economic Pressures
The relationship between the U.S. and South Africa has been rapidly deteriorating since January, when Trump took office and almost immediately began to highlight what he and close aides view as South Africa’s race-based discrimination against Afrikaners, the country’s white ethnic minority that ruled during Apartheid.
In February, Trump signed an executive order ending all foreign aid to South Africa based on unproven claims of “race-based discrimination” — championing the plight of white Afrikaners in what has become a cause celebre for figures in the new MAGA right like billionaire tycoon Elon Musk (who is himself South African).
But South Africa’s political problems with Republicans cut across factions, leaving Ramaphosa particularly vulnerable in Trump’s Washington. The country has deeply angered hawkish Israel supporters in the U.S. for leading a case against Israel at the U.N.’s International Court of Justice, alleging Israel committed genocide in Gaza. And it has angered other Republican defense hawks for courting China and cozying up to Moscow — with which it has deep ties dating to the anti-Apartheid movement in the Cold War — amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Anyone can have an enemy or two in Washington, but they’ve managed to piss off a whole alliance of different factions in D.C.,” said the administration insider.
Seeking Diplomatic Reset
Secretary of State Marco Rubio previewed the political minefield that Ramaphosa is walking into during a Senate hearing on Tuesday. “When one country is consistently unaligned with the United States on issue after issue after issue after issue, now you have to make conclusions about it,” he said of South Africa.
Rubio stressed that Trump was open to resetting the relationship, but only if South Africa was ready to reconsider some of those stances.
Even American policymakers who are eager to improve U.S.-South African ties fume at South Africa’s diplomatic missteps and self-inflicted wounds. Ramaphosa tapped Mcebisi Jonas, a former deputy finance minister, to be the new envoy to Washington to reset relations. But Jonas in the past castigated Trump as a “racist homophobe” and “narcissistic rightwinger,” comments from 2020 that circulated widely in South African media after his new appointment.
Jonas, notably, served as chair of the board for MTN Group, Africa’s largest telecommunications company, which has been named in numerous U.S. antiterrorism lawsuits for its investments in Iran’s technology sector.
Bridging the Divide
“The South Africans have this uncanny ability to do whatever the opposite of reading the room is in Washington,” said one congressional staffer tracking Ramaphosa’s visit. (This staffer was granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the visit.)
In March, the State Department expelled South Africa’s ambassador from Washington after he criticized Trump for playing to white fears and grievances. Rubio announced the expulsion in a social media post, blasting the former ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, as a “race-baiting politician who hates America.”
And just last week, the Trump administration welcomed a group of 49 Afrikaners as refugees — a striking allowance that coincides with the White House ending refugee admissions for nearly all others, including Afghans who served alongside U.S. forces for two decades.
Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of State claimed to reporters that the move had much to do with the fact “that they could be easily assimilated into our country.”
Trade Talks and Tariff Threats
In a statement, the South African government said that “the purpose of the visit is to reset and revitalize bilateral relations” with the United States. Ramaphosa, who pointedly criticized Trump during his first term, told reporters “I’m not scared” last weekend before leaving for Washington.
Trump floated 30 percent tariffs or higher on the country that could return in July if the countries don’t find a resolution before Trump’s 90-day deadline. Ramaphosa may be highly motivated to hammer out a deal by political and economic pressures. South Africa’s unemployment rate has risen above 30 percent and the country’s economic growth has been sluggish.
“The trade relations between South Africa and the United States will be the focus of my working visit here. We aim to strengthen and consolidate relations between our two countries,” Ramaphosa wrote in a post on X.
But trade, Ramaphosa’s top priority, may not be Trump’s main focus. One administration official, granted anonymity to discuss the visit because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that it’s “almost a 100 percent chance” that Trump brings up South Africa’s treatment of its white farmers when the two leaders appear for the now customary Oval Office gaggle with members of the press.
“It is clear that Ramaphosa is coming to Washington with a trade deal to offer preferential access to the U.S market,” Hudson said. “But I think that the politics in the bilateral relationship will get in the way.”
Looking Ahead
Trump’s appeals to white grievance have been a through-line of his political rise. So it’s hardly surprising he, not to mention other prominent MAGA world voices including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have sought to draw attention to South Africa’s glaring racial divide to portray white farmers as the victims of a government guided by principles akin to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion requirements he’s eradicated here.
Since Apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa’s government has taken steps to address the economic inequality caused by the system of segregation, including through a program to redistribute land to Black South Africans that had been taken by former governments. Last year, Ramaphosa enacted a law allowing the government to seize land without compensation when deemed to be in the public interest — a decision Trump and his allies have derided even though it has been rarely used.
In a signal that Ramaphosa is sensitive to his hosts’ frustrations, he appears likely to offer Musk a workaround so that his Starlink internet service can operate in South Africa despite the country’s Black empowerment law requiring companies to have 30 percent Black ownership. Although South Africa has said the carve-out would apply to all information and communications companies, the move runs the risk of appearing as though a foreign government is adjusting policy to benefit the president’s biggest campaign donor.
“The deal is that all races should be treated equally and there should be no preference,” said Musk on Tuesday when asked about the matter in an interview at the Bloomberg Economic Forum. “I am in a situation where I was born in South Africa, but cannot get a license to operate Starlink because I am not Black.”
Conclusion
Ramaphosa is aiming to assuage Trump’s fears about a white genocide in South Africa, and to turn the talks back to trade and tariffs — all to lower the temperature ahead of November’s G20 summit in Johannesburg that, as of now, Trump is uncertain to attend.
The countries are also likely to discuss the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides duty-free treatment for more than 1,800 products from eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa. That deal is set to expire in September, raising alarms among African leaders and some in Congress. Trump administration officials have signaled they hope the program is revised rather than quickly renewed with similar provisions.
“I would encourage the committee, as you look at potential renewal, to look at ways to improve,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told lawmakers before the Ways and Means Committee last month.
