In a country where the title of Vladimir Lenin’s seminal 1901 pamphlet “What Is to Be Done?” is regularly invoked by Marxist politicians and sympathetic analysts, it might seem gratuitous to borrow from the Russian revolutionary when discussing how South Africa might save its relationship with the icon of global capitalism, the United States.
Yet since causing offence is unavoidable on this topic, Lenin’s words are particularly apt.
As predicted, the US has dispatched invitations to all G20 members except SA to attend the first sherpas’ meeting of the US G20 presidency in mid-December.
Secretary of State Mark Rubio explained in sobering detail the reasons for the US exclusion of South Africa, which “fundamentally tarnished the G20’s reputation” through “sabotage and dishonesty”. US officials also promptly deleted the record of meetings and decisions related to SA’s presidency from the G20 website, including the Leaders’ Declaration from the summit.
Another brutal reminder – though none were needed – that diplomatic relations between the two countries are still spiralling 10 months after US President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order targeting South Africa.
During a recent interview about this latest downdraught, ever clear-eyed broadcaster Bongani Bingwa, maddened by SA’s apparent impotence in the face of US reprovals, challenged me to “advise” Pretoria on how to make relations with Washington less turbulent.
To wit, some brief suggestions on what is to be done.
They relate to failed postures rather than specific policies or concessions, which are widely debated.
They are offered on the assumption that President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation believe that expending more energy on salvaging relations with the US administration is worthwhile.
There is no point in reading any further if they don’t.
Stop whinging
The first thing to be done is for the government to stop whinging about the “white genocide” claim. Its emotional charge is no excuse for insisting that South Africa is uniquely hard done by.
This fallacy is of a piece with similarly baseless assertions made by the White House about many countries and regions, such as “Europe buys nothing from us” or “China controls the Panama Canal”.
Obsessively refuting the “white genocide” with data will – on its own – get you nowhere with this administration. And it amplifies claims that words matter more to you than actions.
In early 2025 President Trump alleged that Canada, which drew more fire from the White House than any other country in the first half of this year, was a major source of the lethal drug Fentanyl “flooding” into the US and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. This was his pretext for imposing 25% tariffs on Canadian imports. Yet the US’ own Customs and Border Protection data showed that Canada accounted for just 0.2% of fentanyl seizures.
Then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau strongly denied the allegation – but also implemented concrete measures that were seen to address the broader issue, including appointing a fentanyl czar. Fentanyl is no longer a major source of bilateral tension between the US and Canada.
Poking the bear doesn’t work
SA will remain on a road to nowhere if it also continues to poke the bear. Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool’s diplomatic blunder in March should have been the end of it. Minister Ronald Lamola opining on the US’s “white supremacy agenda” on CNN before the G20 summit confirmed it wasn’t.
By now it should be blindingly obvious: a few moral victories do not make a winning strategy.
SA officials seem to believe that because of their country’s painful history, they must call out racism wherever it rears its head, including – or especially? – the United States.
Presumably, this imperative precedes former president Nelson Mandela’s charge that “human rights [will] be the light that guides our foreign affairs” and that “only true democracy can guarantee rights”, as he famously wrote in 1993.
Otherwise, SA’s diplomats would spend a lot of time poking other bears. Which they don’t.
Forget AfriForum and Solidarity
The government should also stop giving so much oxygen to Afrikaner nationalists. However galling some of their distortions might seem, this type of lobbying for minority interest groups is not uncommon in global capitals.
In his address to the nation after the summit, President Ramaphosa clearly had them in mind when saying that “groups and individuals within our country… spreading disinformation are endangering and undermining South Africa’s national interests, destroying South African jobs and weakening our country’s relations with one of our most important partners”.
The government is incensed that the story peddled by AfriForum and Solidarity has landing in Washington and is fuelling the white genocide myth. Yet its reaction is fruitless.
Pretoria would do well to remember that no country in the world ended the previous century with a better story than South Africa. Rubio even obliquely referred to it in his statement, in the service of his narrow aim: “South Africa entered the post-Cold War era with strong institutions, excellent infrastructure and global goodwill.”
The power of SA’s democratic transition story to persuade and influence other nations was once vast. Perhaps it could be again. It must first, however, be retrieved from the wreckage of corruption and misrule in which it got lost.
New ideas, new people
In a list of unpalatable suggestions, doubtless my last is the least palatable: South Africa’s foreign policy needs new ideas and new people.
SA diplomacy has long been hobbled by contradictions and incoherence. Its worldview is too amply informed by the liberation Struggle. The collapse in relations with the US has exposed how SA simply ran out of ideas.
When Trump threatened to take control of Greenland, Denmark, which administers the territory, established the “Night Watch”, a monitoring unit within the Danish foreign ministry designed to closely track the president’s public statements, social media posts, and activities during Copenhagen’s nighttime hours.
What did SA do after the first executive order?
“Diplomacy is a profession of skill, strategy, leverage and artful compromise. Effective foreign services are noted for the quality of their diplomats,” veteran Canadian public servants Kevin Lynch and James Mitchell wrote recently.
The first duty of any government, whether South African or Canadian, is to defend national sovereignty from outside interference. Yet “knowing what the other side wants and why is just as important”, they stress, “as understanding what your country is seeking and how to get it”.
SA’s foreign policy needs better
The first response of President Ramaphosa’s spokesperson to Rubio’s statement is instructive.
“About this time next year, the UK will be taking over the G20 Presidency,” wrote Vincent Magwenya on X. “We will be able to engage meaningfully and substantively over what really matters to the rest of the world. For now, we will take a commercial break until we resume normal programming.”
His tweet suggests that SA believes that its exclusion from the G20 in Miami is now a fait accompli. And that no other member is willing to sacrifice its place at the table in support of SA, though perhaps that could change over the next week.
Perhaps most tellingly, and leaving aside whether “what matters to the world” is not the US’ G20 agenda, his tweet reveals a deeper cluelessness that has undermined SA’s approach to the Trump administration all year.
Surely someone in Pretoria will have noticed that no country feted the US president more slavishly in 2025 than the United Kingdom. The UK government gave him an unprecedented second state visit and an impossibly lavish banquet hosted by King Charles, attended by assorted billionaires and power brokers. As the New York Times drily observed, “he was being treated like a king by an actual king”.
This is the same government that the president’s spokesperson apparently believes will resist US pressure to keep SA excluded from the G20, should that remain the administration’s position.
South Africa deserves better.
Many nations have experienced dramatic lows in their relations with Washington over the past year. Few are standing still. Fundamental shifts are evident among even the US’ closest allies, from gradual economic decoupling to relying more on their own security needs. They are fortifying themselves against shocks while exploiting opportunities as they arise.
South Africa will have to chart its own path out of this mire.
Rubio offered something of a tiny carrot in his statement: “When South Africa decides it has made the tough decisions needed to fix its broken system and is ready to rejoin the family of prosperous and free nations, the United States will have a seat for it at our table.”
Of course this will make SA’s government boil. But there is nothing to be lost for SA by reading this statement with fresh eyes. DM
Dr Terence McNamee is a Senior Fellow of the Montreal Institute for Global Security. He divides his time between Johannesburg and Canada.