Ramaphosa's talks with Trump chance to reset tattered ties

Yahoo

16-05-2025

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa travels to the United States next week to meet Donald Trump in a bid to rescue deteriorating relations with a vital and increasingly critical trade partner.
Ramaphosa will need to work his skills as a negotiator when he sits down with Trump Wednesday -- and an invitation for the US president to play South Africa's golf courses might just help build rapport, said one analyst.
This will be their first face-to-face meeting since the start of the US president's second term in January, say analysts.
The meeting will be "one of the most important South Africa-US bilateral engagements we've ever had in our history," Institute for Security Studies researcher Priyal Singh told AFP.
Ramaphosa's spokesman Vincent Magwenya said on local television Thursday that the talks would be "honest" and "robust".
But the president will also have to strike a "very conciliatory tone" and avoid a public confrontation like the clash between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, Singh said.
"If Ramaphosa plays his cards right, there could be some kind of new understanding that could work out in South Africa's favour," he added.
"But an equal possibility is that this trip may go completely sideways."
- Consensus builder -
The US administration has torn into several South African policies.
It has attacked its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a land expropriation law meant to redress historical inequalities. Washington alleges the law will allow the government to seize white-owned land.
Washington has also cut aid to South Africa, has announced 31-percent tariffs, and in March expelled Pretoria's ambassador after he criticised Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
Pretoria announced the May 21 meeting days after a first group of white South African Afrikaners, whom incorrectly Trump claims are "persecuted" in South Africa, landed in the United States to accept his offer of "refuge".
Ramaphosa will stress to Trump that conspiracies of a "white genocide" in South Africa are "patently false", Magwenya said.
Pretoria would however not compromise on its genocide case against Israel at the ICJ.
"Those are issues that we believe we can discuss, and where we disagree, we can choose to respectfully agree to disagree," he said.
- Golf diplomacy -
Ramaphosa is a seasoned negotiator who honed his skills in the transition to democracy in the 1990s.
"He's certainly not going to prove President Trump wrong in front of the media," said Richard Morrow, a researcher at the Brenthurst Foundation.
"Ramaphosa's key strength in this context is that he's a consensus builder."
Other world leaders, from Zelensky to the UK's Keir Starmer, have managed to reach common ground by "flattering" Trump, Morrow said.
"When it comes to Trump, this kind of out-of-the-box thinking in which leaders can build personal rapport through unofficial engagements is absolutely the way to go," said Singh.
For Ramaphosa, the connection could be golf, and he will likely repeat his invitation for Trump to visit South Africa's world-class courses.
The president wants Trump to "see for himself that we're not running around killing white people" and "enjoy some of our beautiful golf courses", Magwenya said.
- G20 -
High on Ramaphosa's agenda will be trade with the United States, South Africa's second-biggest trade partner.
He will be concerned about the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) deal, which provides duty-free access to the US market to some African products.
Tariffs announced by Trump in April and later suspended for 90 days threatened to slash tens of thousands of jobs in South Africa, where unemployment is already running at 32 percent.
"In the event that the Trump administration has decided to do away with AGOA, we will be ready to engage over what we believe is a mutually beneficial trade relationship," Magwenya told the state broadcaster SABC.
The country has rare earth metals and minerals to offer, he noted.
"South Africa has a wealth of critical minerals, particularly in the form of platinum group metals, chromium, manganese, all of which will have a role to play in America's industrial trajectory if President Trump can have his way," Morrow said.
Ramaphosa will also want to convince Trump to attend the G20 summit of developing nations in South Africa in November, which he has threatened to skip, said Thelela Ngcetane-Vika, of the Wits School of Governance.
"South Africa, small as it is, is a strategic nation," she said.
"It's a gateway to the continent, the most sophisticated economy in Africa, it is also important in the multipolar world... and critically important in Global South politics."
Already in December, Ramaphosa suggested Trump might find time for a friendly round of golf if he attended the G20 summit.
The two of them, he suggested, might "go and play golf and talk about global matters".
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