Democracies and autocracies, and how they play into US-South African relations

By 2045, America will become the world’s first post-industrial state to have achieved “majority-minority” status, according to the authoritative US Census Bureau.

In essence, it will no longer be identified as a white-dominant country. This should have a positive impact on America’s liberal vision of global order achieved by multilateralism, racist efforts by the Trump administration toward South Africa notwithstanding.

The purpose of this essay is to speculate what this would do to a world increasingly divided by democracies and autocracies and how this could affect US-South African relations.

Last year, Russian and East European scholar Anne Applebaum published Autocracy, Inc. with the subtitle: “The dictators who want to run the world.”

Her thesis, backed by a lot of evidence, is that dictators of diverse ideologies support one another for the sake of their shared interest in surviving and amassing huge wealth. They comport themselves as regional hegemons, but several, notably China and Russia, also pursue global interests and, with some qualification, generally support one another.

Autocracies claim “non-alignment” but are betrayed by the increasing membership of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) with autocratic countries: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump’s plummeting popularity

In the short term, South Africa can tout its “non-alignment”, in part due to the autocratic behaviour of current US President Donald Trump. Trump’s unprovoked war with Iran has hurt many countries, including South Africa, and is increasingly unpopular with American voters.

Trump’s falling approval of 37% and rising disapproval of 60% may reflect, in part, the war with Iran. Foreign Policy’s Paul Musgrave calls it: Iran is a bigger defeat than Vietnam.

Although the closing of the Strait of Hormuz is increasingly unpopular with Americans, it has inflated the cost of living in many countries, including for South Africans. What impact this will have on the US mid-term elections on 6 November 2026 and in the 2028 US presidential election is anyone’s guess. But the prospects for Democratic wins in both provide South Africa with key policy and even strategic choices.

Trump exposed both his ignorance of South African politics and his racial prejudice early in his second term, with his third executive order on 7 February 2025, cutting off assistance and offering refugee status only to Afrikaners. Trump has since increased the cap for Afrikaners from 7,500 to 17,500, at a time when he is expelling and denying entry to people of colour.

Convergence

America’s relations with black South Africa have been strained historically, and the removal of Nelson Mandela’s branding as a terrorist occurred only on 1 July 2008. Throughout the Cold War, the US was tacitly aligned with the apartheid regime. And in Trump’s second term, it is now at another low point. Relations between these two democracies are again severely strained.

Yet we must not forget the obvious fact that the US is still the world’s biggest economy. Unlike relations with China, South Africa and the US are both democracies, with interests that are more diverse. And democracies are more prone to evolve over time. The former imperial powers of the European Union are today robust democracies with close ties to democratic South Africa.

But South Africa, though for more than a generation inclusive and diverse, remains among the most inequitable of nations. The EU does what it can to help, but America, if democratic multilateralism survives Trump, has the greatest stake in South Africa’s success.

Prospects are good for the Democrats later this year for taking control of Congress, and the presidency in 2028. Regardless of the short-term results, with the US census projecting achievement of majority minority by 2045, it will help ensure that America returns to the multilateralism that converges with and complements South Africa. DM