South African President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks at the G20 meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Feb. 20. Mr. Ramaphosa’s delegation to the White House will include a white politician to help dispel the false allegation that the white minority is racially persecuted.Jerome Delay/The Associated Press
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will try to emulate the phlegmatic tactics of Prime Minister Mark Carney as he navigates a potentially explosive meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump this week.
After taking steps to ease tensions with Canada, Ukraine, Iran and China in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has focused on South Africa as the main target for his global wrath. This leaves Mr. Ramaphosa facing significant risks as he ventures into the White House on Wednesday to try to placate the erratic U.S. leader.
For three months, Mr. Trump has hit South Africa with a barrage of attacks: drastic cuts to U.S. aid programs, the expulsion of its ambassador, harsh criticism of its policies on Israel and Iran, a sharply increased 31-per-cent tariff rate, an airlift of 59 purported white refugees from South Africa, and most recently a bizarre accusation that it is perpetrating genocide against its white minority.
Throughout the assault, the South African President has been desperately seeking a meeting with Mr. Trump, hoping to appease him with personal assurances and an offer of a trade deal. This week he has finally obtained the meeting, but nobody can be certain of Mr. Trump’s mood in his first face-to-face encounter with the leader of a country that he has constantly vilified.
Many South Africans were watching closely in February when Mr. Trump humiliated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in their Oval Office meeting by shouting him down and forcing him into an early departure. For Mr. Ramaphosa, this is the worst-case scenario: an orchestrated ambush that could scupper his chances of a much-needed trade deal.
South Africans were also watching closely when Mr. Carney mollified Mr. Trump with a mixture of flattery, extreme politeness and calm demeanour in the Oval Office this month. Mr. Ramaphosa will try similar tactics. When facing political attacks, he traditionally responds with calmness and good humour – traits that will help him in the White House.
He is also a wealthy businessman, which could help him to turn the Trump meeting into a deal-making session on trade. And he has researched Mr. Trump’s favourite hobbies. In a January phone call, he invited Mr. Trump to play a round on South Africa’s golf courses, made famous by Mr. Trump’s close friend, Gary Player, the South African golfing legend.
Mr. Ramaphosa is expected to renew the invitation this week, reminding Mr. Trump that the two of them could take time for golfing during the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November – even though the Trump administration has stayed away from most G20 meetings so far and Mr. Trump himself has threatened to boycott the summit.
Mr. Ramaphosa’s delegation to the White House will include a white politician, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, to help dispel the false allegation that the white minority is racially persecuted.
Earlier this year, South African diplomats talked to Canadian officials to get tips on dealing with Mr. Trump. “South Africa wanted to reach out to understand a bit more the Trump administration and how to deal with it,” then-minister of foreign affairs Mélanie Joly told The Globe and Mail during a visit to Johannesburg in February. “Canada is the country that understands the American system and the American people.”
Mr. Ramaphosa hopes to keep Mr. Trump narrowly focused on trade. “We will be conducting our discussions in a business-like manner,” he told South Africa’s state broadcaster, SABC. “We are not going to be distracted by anything. We will just focus on what is important to our country: trade.”
Some observers believe Mr. Trump will tone down his criticism of South Africa in their face-to-face meeting, since the optics of bullying an African leader might be bad. But Mr. Ramaphosa says he is prepared to challenge the falsehoods about genocide and land seizures from white farmers, if they arise.
He can also anticipate attacks on South Africa’s affirmative action programs, known as Black Economic Empowerment, which the Trump administration sees as an example of the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs that it is swiftly dismantling in the United States.
Mr. Ramaphosa will defend those programs, seeing them as crucial to overcoming the racial barriers that apartheid created. But he might offer some kind of exemption for Mr. Trump’s billionaire friend, Elon Musk, who harshly criticized South Africa’s Black empowerment laws after seeking permission for his satellite internet company, Starlink, to operate in South Africa.
Mr. Ramaphosa could be asked about an anti-apartheid song, Kill the Boer, which is sometimes sung by members of an opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). Some U.S. officials have already complained about the song, portraying it as an incitement to violence against the white Afrikaner minority.
If asked about it, Mr. Ramaphosa is likely to point to South Africa’s top courts, which upheld the EFF’s right to sing the song, ruling that it is not meant literally and is essentially a protest song about economic injustice. He might also note that the EFF was supported by less than 10 per cent of voters in the last election.
Another frequent complaint from the Trump administration is the South African case at the International Court of Justice, where it has accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. But the South African government has made clear that it won’t back down on the Israel case. This weekend, it issued another statement on Gaza, accusing the Israeli government of turning the Palestinian territory into “a killing field” with a “human-made famine.”