Lamola slams Solidarity Movement’s latest visit to US, amid critical trade talks

Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola said the visit to the US by the Solidarity Movement while the United Nations (UN) General Assembly takes place in New York is a “deliberate strategy” to undermine Pretoria’s relationship with Washington.

“Hence, we see it as a detraction. It can’t be a coincidence that they come also now when they are aware that there are ongoing negotiations in relation to trade, but also there are engagements on a number of issues that affect South Africa-US relations.

“So it’s not a coincidence, it’s a clear, deliberate strategy,” Lamola told Daily Maverick in an interview in New York on Sunday, 21 September.

The Solidarity Movement is the umbrella body for a range of Afrikaans interest groups, including AfriForum and the union Solidarity. This is the group’s second visit to the US to lobby US individuals this year, after a visit to Washington in February, which Pretoria condemned as a “misinformation” campaign.

Read more: Flat spin — Solidarity’s Washington lobbying trip is big on hype, scant on details

Members of the Solidarity Movement, who announced their visit to the US in late August, travelled to the country while officials from South Africa’s Presidency and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) were meeting with representatives from the Trump administration, legislators and businesspeople in New York and Washington.

This was after President Cyril Ramaphosa sent teams to the US earlier this month to prepare for further trade negotiations with the US.

Daily Maverick reported last week that DTIC Minister Parks Tau was “cautiously optimistic” that a trade agreement with the US would be reached on the back of engagements with the US. At a SA-US trade and investment dialogue in New York last Wednesday, Tau said the DTIC had since received a revised text from the US and was consulting with various departments before returning to the US with a formal response.

Agoa expiry

The talks in the US came days before the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) expires on Tuesday, 30 September. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, Massad Boulos, had signalled his support for renewing the trade pact for one year. Daily Maverick requested comment from the DTIC, which was not received by the time of publication.

In a statement, Solidarity Movement chairperson Flip Buys said the purpose of the group’s latest foray to the US was to “advocate for the country, the economy and the people who are working”. He called the South African government and the ANC “complicit” in the poor diplomatic relations between SA and the US, and said they “can no longer be trusted to handle” relations between the two countries.

According to the statement, the Solidarity Movement had sent several letters to the South African government, including Ramaphosa, to engage on the “diplomatic crisis” before its visit. “However, this was unsuccessful.”

Read more: Parks Tau ‘cautiously optimistic’ SA will reach trade deal with US after Trump tariffs

Jaco Kleynhans, the Solidarity Movement’s head of international liaison, told Daily Maverick the “primary purpose of the visit is about the trade relations” between SA and the US. However, he said the visit was planned several months ago after he was invited to a Republican leadership conference in Michigan, which took place from 19-21 September.

While in the US, the group has announced its own “proposed trade framework” between SA and the US, which it says was developed from “discussions with representatives of the US government”, as well as President Donald Trump’s executive order. On Thursday, 25 September, it said it had “asked the White House” for Trump to sign another executive order to bring tariff relief for certain sectors in SA, pending the finalisation of a trade agreement between SA and the US.

As with previous visits to the US, the Solidarity Movement has been tight-lipped when it comes to the question of to whom they conveyed this message. Aside from disclosing a “brief” meeting with Republican Representative John James of Michigan, Kleynhans declined to give names of the individuals they met. (James introduced legislation in the US House of Representatives in February 2024, which accused SA of acting against the US’s security and foreign policy interests and called on the US government to conduct a full review of the countries’ bilateral relations. The Bill ran out of time when Congress ended before the US elections in November.)

It was a privilege to meet today with one of my favorite American politicians, Representative John James, a member of the US House of Representatives. James has already spoken out strongly about things that are going wrong in South Africa three years ago. James, like us at… pic.twitter.com/TiYNSZIUHh

— Jaco Kleynhans (@JacoKleynhans) September 21, 2025

‘Undermines SA’s national interest’ 

At a press briefing on SA’s response to Trump’s 30% tariffs in August, Lamola said Pretoria’s efforts to reset the relationship with Washington had been “undermined by some actors” within South Africa.

He accused political parties, including some in the Government of National Unity (GNU), of “cheap political scoring” on this issue. Earlier this year, Ramaphosa called AfriForum and Solidarity’s visit to the US in February “unpatriotic” for inciting a diplomatic rift between Pretoria and Washington through fearmongering over SA’s Expropriation Act, according to Business Day.

The Solidarity Movement’s proposed trade framework details its stance on issues including farm murders, BEE and the Expropriation Act.

Lamola told Daily Maverick the lobby group had “undermined” South Africa’s relations with the US because they “distort” SA’s BEE and affirmative action policies, “which are necessary in terms of our constitutional imperative to redress the imbalances of the past”.

Let me state this plainly: I condemn Solidariteit’s divisive rhetoric in its totality. It is divisive, it is anti-democratic, and it has no place in our sovereign nation.

The Afrikaner community is a fundamental part of South Africa's unity & diversity, one group among many that… pic.twitter.com/lcbIZXNFOo

— Minister: International Relations and Cooperation (@RonaldLamola) September 20, 2025

“It undermines the South African government’s correct and factual policy positions that are conveyed to people in Washington and also to the Congress in the US.

“But it also undermines South Africa’s national interest because this ends up being used against South Africa and impacts the relations we have with the US — which we’ve always seen as mutually beneficial — it affects the economy, this impacts [people’s jobs],” said Lamola.

Read more: The ANC and the media’s missed information in spurious claims against the Solidarity Movement

Kleynhans said Lamola’s comments were “completely unfounded” and “unfair”, adding that Solidarity made all its documents and proposals public.

Anti-SA Bill 

While South African officials were in the US for trade talks, a second Bill that would call on the US government to comprehensively review US relations with South Africa and impose sanctions on ANC leaders was introduced in the US Senate by Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

It’s a companion to the Bill introduced by Texan Republican Ronny Jackson in the House of Representatives in April, which increases the chance of it being passed. Jackson’s Bill passed the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in July and will now go to the full House of Representatives.

Jackson’s Bill cites a list of actions by the ANC which it says have offended the US, focusing on the ANC’s good relations with Russia, China and Iran, and its hostility to Israel and Taiwan. In April, Daily Maverick revealed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was a significant donor to Jackson and several other Congress members hostile to SA.