Faced with the links between the two countries, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, assured Monday March 17, that “improving the relationship” with the United States was a “priority”. This announcement follows the expulsion on Friday of his ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, in a context of multiplication of Washington attacks towards Pretoria since the return of Donald Trump in power.
In an apparent desire to calm an at the lowest relationship, the South African head of state recalled, during a trip to Johannesburg, the importance of trade with the United States, “our second trading partner after China”. He also said he “noted the dissatisfaction expressed by the United States, in particular about the” ambassador’s remarks.
Indeed, Ebrahim Rasol sparked the American wrath by describing Donald Trump as “mobilizing a supremacism against the power in place”, during an intervention in a webarin on Friday, March 14.
The latter was then accused by the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, of “feeding racial tensions” and “hate the United States and the president” Donald Trump. “We have nothing to chat with him. He is no longer welcome in our big country,” added the head of American diplomacy.
Agreements to temper the relationship
Trying to bring order to his relations with the United States, the South African president strives to recall the convergent positions that the two countries maintain in many areas. He stressed that Pretoria shared the same line as Washington in the Ukraine.
“The only way to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is to resort to peaceful means,” he said about the official visit of President Volodymyr Zelensky in South Africa, scheduled for April 10. “We believe that it is precisely the same message as President Trump and the United States also transmitted to President Zelensky. So we are united on this point. We have the same goal.”
“Commitment to (of the United States) continues,” added Cyril Ramaphosa. “It will be done through representatives of business circles, the world of work and a large number of other interlocutors, as well as the government.”
South Africa, a privileged target of the Trump administration
South Africa has been particularly targeted in recent weeks by Washington. In a presidential decree cutting him off last month, the American president accused South Africa of “unjust” the Afrikaners, descendants of European settlers, and castigated his complaint for genocide aimed at the International Court of Justice.
Referring to a recently promulgated law on the expropriation which allows in certain circumstances to the South African government to seize land without compensation, the American president also promised to South African farmers a “quick access to citizenship” on his social network this month.
“They confiscate their land and their farms, and much worse than it,” he accused, while whites remained owners of 72 % of agricultural land in 2017, according to official figures. A legacy of colonization, then apartheid.