When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently denounced “vicious global right‑wing forces” at an ANC conference, observers understood he was targeting US President Donald Trump. The criticism is unsurprising: ties between South Africa and the United States have worsened markedly since Trump returned to the White House in 2025.
Trump has claimed, without presenting substantiating evidence, that South Africa’s white minority is undergoing a genocide. Ramaphosa’s administration strongly rejects that charge. Trump also boycotted last year’s G20 meetings hosted by South Africa, and reports say the US pressured France to exclude South Africa from the upcoming G7 summit in Evian.
When did ties fray?
Analyst Daniel Silke of Cape Town’s Political Futures Consultancy says the rift did not begin with Trump’s return. “This has been a long time coming,” he told DW. Over the past decade South Africa has reoriented its foreign policy away from the US and the West and moved closer to BRICS — the bloc of emerging economies formed partly as a counterweight to Western groupings like the G7.
Ramaphosa sought to preserve ties with Russia even after Moscow’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine, reflecting the ANC’s longstanding historical links to the Soviet Union dating to its support for the anti‑apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s. In recent years South Africa has also deepened its relationship with China.
Washington has watched this geopolitical shift and the BRICS effort to reduce the US dollar’s dominance in global trade with concern, Silke said. Meanwhile, ANC skepticism toward the US runs deep, rooted in the Reagan era when the United States resisted imposing comprehensive sanctions on the apartheid regime. Relations improved after apartheid ended in 1994 under President Bill Clinton, and today the US is South Africa’s second‑largest trading partner after China, according to Germany Trade and Invest.
But Washington’s recent rightward ideological turn — embodied in the Trump administration’s confrontational stance — has worsened the split with the ANC.
Trump accuses South Africa of allowing “white genocide”
Noor Nieftagodien, head of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, argues that influential tech entrepreneurs close to Trump’s MAGA movement have helped push the Republican Party toward more openly racist positions. Figures such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel — with personal ties to southern Africa — have allied with ultra‑right groups in South Africa that promote the false claim of white genocide, Nieftagodien says. Trump has seized on that narrative.
DW’s Johannesburg correspondent Dianne Hawker notes that South Africa has been in Trump’s crosshairs since early in his presidency. Within weeks of his inauguration, Trump announced cuts to all US aid to South Africa, citing alleged human‑rights abuses. Those cuts affected programs across the country, including essential services for people living with HIV.
The rift widened when the US began granting asylum to white South Africans while lowering overall refugee admissions.
Ties were further strained after South Africa accused Israel of genocide in its proceedings before the International Court of Justice in The Hague in December 2023. In March 2026 the US formally complained about that allegation, siding with Israel, which rejects the genocide charge.
What is South Africa’s stance on Iran?
The ANC’s favorable view of Iran dates back to 1979, when the Islamic Revolution prompted Iran to stop supplying oil to apartheid South Africa. That historical connection helps explain why South Africa has not distanced itself from Iran even as the US has engaged in military actions there. Nieftagodien says Washington — and Trump in particular — is angered by South Africa’s refusal to conform to US foreign‑policy positions.
Trump, according to analysts, appears intent on penalizing South Africa for pursuing an independent diplomatic path. Observers do not expect relations to improve while he remains in office.
This article was originally written in German.