South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa will hold crucial talks at the White House with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday in a high-stakes meeting that could improve or deteriorate already frosty relations between the nations.
Ramaphosa is hopeful his visit could end a diplomatic feud that sparked aid cancellations by Trump and fueled the expulsion of his nation’s ambassador to the US.
There are also fears that the African nation could now potentially lose some of its US trade privileges as relations between the two countries sour.
Ramaphosa’s trip comes just over a week after a group of 59 White South Africans arrived in the US after being granted refugee status.
Trump and his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country, claimed the South Africans were being persecuted back home. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was in the US national interest to prioritize White South Africans for refugee resettlement, telling a hearing that they’re “a small subset” who “are easier to vet.”
The Trump administration has sharply criticized an expropriation law, which was enacted in South Africa earlier this year. The law empowers South Africa’s government to take land and redistribute it with no obligation to pay compensation in some instances.
Trump claimed that lands belonging to South Africa’s minority Whites, who own 72% of the nation’s agricultural land, were being targeted for confiscation, and cited unverified claims that “a genocide is taking place” in South Africa. He added that “White farmers are being brutally killed” amid reports of farm attacks.
Trump also disapproves of South Africa’s genocide case before the International Court of Justice against the US ally Israel.
Ramaphosa’s office said he would “discuss bilateral, regional and global issues of interest” with the US president at the White House. Analysts say the meeting could pose a tipping point for their fraught ties.
The US is South Africa’s second-largest trading partner, and the African nation benefits the most from a US trade agreement that provides preferential duty-free access to US markets for eligible sub-Saharan African nations.
Under that agreement, South Africa is the main agricultural exporter and exports two-thirds of its agricultural goods to the US, tariff-free. But some US lawmakers want those benefits withdrawn when the trade agreement is reviewed this year.
‘A tricky place to be’
South African researcher Neo Letswalo describes the anticipated meeting as “make-or-break” and one that requires “supreme negotiation tactics” by Ramaphosa.
The South African leader is set for a tight rope walk at the White House, he added, reminiscing about a shouting match that broke out in the Oval Office between Trump, his Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late February.
He believes that “Ramaphosa would maintain his composure to iron out some of the misunderstandings that Trump’s administration officials have about South Africa.”
Other analysts, such as Christopher Afoke Isike, who is a professor of African politics and international relations at the University of Pretoria, believe that Ramaphosa can pull through, “considering the fact that he’s a businessman president like President Trump.”
Ramaphosa plans to soften the ground with a potential licensing deal for Starlink, a satellite internet service owned by Musk, Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya told Reuters Monday.
What could go wrong?
For Letswalo, the crucial talks between Trump and Ramaphosa could hit a brick wall if the White House makes costly demands.
“A dealbreaker would be a request by Washington for Pretoria to retrieve the Land Expropriation Act or Gaza Case in order to continue the US-SA relationship,” he said, adding, “it would be interesting to see how President Ramaphosa maintains the sovereignty and his statement of ‘not going to be bullied by America’, without compromising the pre-existing relationship with the US.”
That task could be one of Ramaphosa’s most challenging, according to André Duvenhage, a politics professor at South Africa’s Northwest University.
“This may be his single biggest challenge in terms of anything he had to deal with in his term as president of the Republic of South Africa.”