20-05-2025
South Africa braces for Trump showdown – but it may be too late to save Pepfar
South Africa's visit to Washington to reset relations with Donald Trump is not expected to deliver a resumption of aid to fight the HIV epidemic, public health experts have said.
Cyril Rampahosa, South African president, will on Wednesday meet Donald Trump at the White House in a high-stakes effort to rebuild dismal ties while trying to avoid a browbeating like that delivered to Volodymyr Zelensky in February.
South Africa has been hammered by global aid cuts, targeted by sanctions and tariffs, and accused of persecuting white farmers in the four months since Mr Trump's inauguration.
The country with the world's highest number of HIV patients has also lost some £300m each year in funding given by America to tackle the long-running epidemic.
Globally, the cuts are expected to undo years of progress trying to curb the virus, and prompt a return to levels of new infections last seen in the early 2000s.
For two decades, South Africa has received vast sums of aid from America under the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar).
However aid is not expected to be on the agenda for Wednesday and no matter how well the meeting goes, funding is not expected to be resumed.
Prof Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Program of Research in South Africa, said 'We have pretty much given up on the basis that Pepfar is pretty much over and [American government aid agency] USAid is gone.
'We don't think either is coming back, so there's not much point asking for them. It's not about aid, I don't think it's even going to feature on the agenda.
'I think that the goal is to establish a rapport with Trump. We have watched how Zelensky was treated and we don't want to repeat that.'
Peter Fabricus, a foreign policy analyst in South Africa, said he was not expecting any progress on health and Mr Ramaphosa had already indicated that South Africa should not be dependent on external funding.
Instead, the meeting is expected to focus on trade deals.
However, Mr Ramaphosa will have to walk such a difficult tightrope that it is believed several advisers urged him not to make the trip.
On the one hand Mr Ramaphosa believes that by arriving with a hard-headed package of deals, including opportunities for Elon Musk, he could soothe relations and protect trade with his biggest economic partner.
But at the same time, others worry it reeks of desperation and risks worsening relations by opening up the president to an ambush like the one Mr Zelensky was caught in in February.
In the four months since Mr Trump's election, already strained ties between Washington and Pretoria have plummeted and South Africa has found itself a punching bag for the Republican administration.
First South Africa was hit with global aid cuts, then it was singled out for sanctions after the White House accused it of 'egregious actions' persecuting Afrikaners.
America has falsely accused South Africa of appropriating white land and has alleged there is a genocide against white farmers. This month it welcomed a batch of Afrikaner refugees and said more are on the way.
Moreover Washington has been infuriated by South Africa bringing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and recently accused the South African ambassador of being a Trump-hating race-baiter, and kicked him out.
Then, Mr Trump's sweeping trade tariffs, announced in April though paused for 90 days, included a levy of 31 percent on South African imports.
The onslaught has left a shell-shocked South Africa grappling with how to reset relations with a country which is its second largest trade partner, and until this year provided huge sums for health and research.
South African officials have decided the best way to establish that rapport is to arrive with tempting deals, including for Mr Musk, the South African billionaire and close ally of Mr Trump.
Mr Musk has regularly attacked the South African government for being racist against whites and many in Pretoria think he is partially responsible for turning Mr Trump against them.
Mr Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot was last week found to be warning users on X of white genocide, even on posts about unrelated topics.
One potential proposal would be for his electric car company, Tesla, to receive favourable tariffs on its imports into South Africa in exchange for building electric vehicle charging stations.
Another would be for Mr Musk's Starlink satellite internet service to receive a workaround of local black ownership laws to operate in the country.
South Africa is meanwhile looking at deals to protect its farming sector from tariffs.
Mr Ramaphosa is also thought to have been trying to reach out to improve relations through compatriots close to Mr Trump, such as Ernie Els, the golfer and Johann Rupert, another billionaire businessman.
His most difficult task may be getting Mr Trump to back down on his rhetoric that South Africa is persecuting whites.
He raised the issue in his first term in 2018 and has since repeatedly raised the issue of a genocide against white farmers.
Just days before Mr Ramaphosa's visit, he said South Africa was 'out of control' and repeated that: 'It's a genocide that's taking place.'
His allegations have been dismissed in South Africa across the political spectrum and America's acceptance of several dozen Afrikaner refugees has been mocked.
The country's appalling crime rate does include attacks on farms, and fear of rural attacks is widespread among farmers. Police are accused of doing too little to stop them.
But experts have said the crime is common opportunistic criminality and not a planned extermination or politically motivated, pointing out that black people are much more likely to be killed than whites.
Police statistics show that nearly 7,000 people were killed in the last three months of 2024 and of those, 12 murders occurred on farms. The data do not record race, but one of those killed was a farmer and the rest were farm workers, people staying on farms and a security guard.
John Steenhuisen, leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party, which is often accused of being beholden to white interests, this week said he hoped Mr Ramaphosa could set Mr Trump right.
Mr Steenhuisen, who is agriculture minister in a fractious coalition with Mr Ramaphosa's African National Congress (ANC), said: 'I really hope that during the upcoming visit to Washington, [Mr Ramaphosa] is going to be able to put the facts before his counterpart and to demonstrate that there is no mass expropriation of land taking place in South Africa, and there is no genocide taking place.'
The concern in South Africa is that Mr Trump is not meeting because he wants to hear their side, but because he wants to produce a piece of political theatre that will go down well with his supporters.
Mr Fabricus said the prospect of a Zelensky-style scolding must be a possibility.
He said: 'I think he is capable of inviting someone just to give them a very public dressing down.'
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