Facing Trump in the White House, Ramaphosa has one job: Defend South Africa’s sovereignty

On Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa will walk into the lion’s den, the White House, to face a man who has made it his mission to humiliate South Africa on the global stage.

Donald Trump’s second term in office has brought with it a wave of renewed aggression towards countries that dare not toe American imperialism line.

South Africa, with its unwavering support for Palestine, its transformation agenda at home, and its refusal to bend to Western pressure, has been placed squarely in Trump’s firing line.

Aid has been cut. Long-standing development programmes, including life-saving ones like PEPFAR, have been frozen. And in a move reeking of political theatre and racial undertones, Trump has pushed through an expedited programme to grant white South Africans - specifically Afrikaners - refugee status in the United States based on an imaginary “genocide”.

Now, Ramaphosa is in Washington for what the presidency has billed as a “reset” of relations.

While the stakes are high, Ramaphosa must not go there to beg.

If Ramaphosa grovels, he not only undermines South Africa’s sovereignty - he reinforces the very narrative Trump wants to sell to the world: that South Africa is broken, its policies racist, and its leadership desperate.
That is not the South Africa we are. And it is not the leadership this moment demands.

What Ramaphosa should do is what South Africa has always done best on the global stage: negotiate from strength, not submission.

Despite our challenges, South Africa still holds cards that Washington cannot ignore.

We are a critical mineral powerhouse , the world’s largest producer of platinum, a major supplier of manganese and vanadium, and a vital node in the global green energy and defence value chain. 

With the US in a race to decouple from China’s mineral dominance, South Africa is more than a partner,  it’s a strategic necessity.

We are also the gateway to the African continent, the most sophisticated financial and logistics hub south of the Sahara. The JSE, our banks, our ports, our tech sector, they still matter, even if Trump would rather pretend otherwise.

Then there’s our role as chair of the G20 this year. Trump may not care about multilateralism, but his advisers do. And if Washington wants traction in Africa or the Global South, it’s going to need Pretoria, whether Trump likes it or not.

Ramaphosa must use this meeting to assert those strengths, calmly and confidently. Offer cooperation on trade, on security, even on migration, but only on equal footing. Not as a supplicant but as a sovereign head of state.

And he must not give an inch on transformation. South Africa’s policies on land reform, economic justice and equity were born of our country’s painful history and not Donald Trump’s Truth Social tantrums. These are not up for negotiation.

The biggest mistake Ramaphosa could make is to appease Trump and his white nationalist acolytes. To soften our stance on Israel, to dilute our domestic agenda in return for a photo-op and a hand shake will not be diplomacy, it would be surrender.

Instead, he must speak with the moral clarity of a leader who knows his country is imperfect, but principled. A country that may be struggling, but still stands for something.

History will remember this meeting not for how Trump behaved, but for how Ramaphosa responded.

We cannot control the bully in the room. But we can control how we face him.

*** Lee Rondganger is the deputy editor of IOL

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