South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent denunciation of what he called “vicious global right‑wing forces” at an ANC conference was widely read as aimed at US President Donald Trump. The relationship between Pretoria and Washington has noticeably worsened since Trump returned to the White House in 2025.
The immediate flashpoint has been Trump’s repeated, unsubstantiated assertion that South Africa’s white minority is suffering a “genocide.” The Ramaphosa government strongly rejects that claim. Tensions also spilled into diplomatic arenas: Trump skipped the G20 summit hosted by South Africa last year, and media reports say the US lobbied France to bar South Africa from the upcoming G7 meeting in Evian.
But analysts say the split predates Trump’s return. Daniel Silke of Cape Town’s Political Futures Consultancy argues the drift is rooted in a longer-term reorientation of South Africa’s foreign policy. Over the past decade Pretoria has moved closer to BRICS and other emerging partners as part of a broader shift away from traditional Western alignments.
That reorientation is visible in several choices by President Ramaphosa. South Africa tried to preserve ties with Russia after Moscow’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine, a stance that reflects the African National Congress’s historic ties to the Soviet Union going back to the anti‑apartheid era. At the same time, economic and political engagement with China has deepened.
Those moves have unsettled Washington, particularly given BRICS initiatives that aim to reduce the US dollar’s dominance in global trade. Skepticism of the United States also runs deep inside the ANC, tracing back to the Reagan years when the US resisted comprehensive sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Relations warmed after apartheid ended in 1994 and the US became an important trading partner; Germany Trade & Invest notes the United States is now South Africa’s second‑largest trading partner after China.
Observers say, however, that the more confrontational and rightward tilt of US policy under Trump has amplified longstanding disagreements. Analysts point to a network of right‑wing and tech figures with ties to southern Africa — including high‑profile entrepreneurs sympathetic to Trump — who have promoted the false white‑genocide narrative. Noor Nieftagodien of the University of the Witwatersrand argues those links helped push parts of the Republican base toward adopting the claim, which Trump has seized upon.
Relations cooled further when the Trump administration cut virtually all US aid to South Africa shortly after his 2017 inauguration in his earlier term, citing alleged human‑rights concerns; those cuts affected health and social programs, including services for people with HIV. More recently, the US began offering asylum to some white South Africans while reducing overall refugee admissions, a move critics say signaled selective sympathy.
Diplomatic rows have compounded the bilateral strain. South Africa’s decision to accuse Israel of committing genocide in proceedings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in December 2023 prompted a formal US complaint in March 2026, in which the United States sided with Israel. On other global issues, South Africa’s long‑standing sympathy toward Iran — grounded in ties that date to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Iran stopped selling oil to apartheid South Africa — helps explain Pretoria’s reluctance to follow US positions on Tehran.
Analysts interpret the US stance as punitive pressure aimed at deterring an independent South African foreign policy. With Trump in office and relations increasingly politicized, many observers do not expect a swift rapprochement.
This article was originally written in German.