PREVIEW
US ambassador warns of ‘escalatory measures’, testing Pretoria's bet that trade ties and a British G20 presidency will outlast Trump-era hostility
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has rejected the latest barrage of diplomatic threats after United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on South Africans involved in what he called ‘race-based’ discrimination against white Afrikaners. That could be a wide-ranging visa ban on government officials but Rubio has not explained how the policy will work.
Pretoria has dismissed the US visa restrictions as having been based on ‘mischaracterisations’ promoted by ‘fringe groups’. The rhetoric from the US President Donald J Trump’s administration continues to lambast the Ramaphosa government, recycling multiple false far-right tropes.
Yet business ties remain strong. South Africa has not been denied access to duty and tariff free exports to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act which was extended by two years to December 2028 in August (AC Vol 67 No 3, Problematic resurrection for AGOA trade scheme after Congress votes).
And the relative diplomatic isolation caused by Trump excluding South Africa from G20 meetings and putting pressure on France’s President Emmanuel Macron to rescind an invitation to May’s G7 could soon be over (AC Vol 67 No 13, G7 mineral pact puts African producers in crossfire of big-power rivalry).
South Africa has to ride out another three months of the US G20 presidency before it is handed over to Britain in December. British ministers have, in recent weeks, promised to take on the agenda advanced during South Africa’s stint at the G20 helm in 2025 including reforms to the international financial system to tackle unsustainable debt.
On 8 September, Britain’s Minister for Africa, Kirsty McNeill, told MPs that London was ‘looking forward to their [South Africa’s] full participation in the UK's Presidency.’
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