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Can Mandela's former negotiator fix fractious relations with Trump?

The South African president will try to reset relations with the US in a high-stakes White House meeting on Wednesday.

AFP/Getty Images / It will be President Cyril Ramaphosa's first meeting with Trump at the White House

AFP/Getty Images / It will be President Cyril Ramaphosa's first meeting with Trump at the White House

South Africa's president has faced tough challenges before - he was the chief negotiator for Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) during talks to end white-minority rule in the early 1990s - but his forthcoming meeting in the White House will require all his charm.

Cyril Ramaphosa wants to mend his nation's fractured relationship with the US - and his famous negotiating skills will be put to the test as he tries to win over the world's most powerful leader.

US President Donald Trump and his team have been uncharacteristically quiet about the trip, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declining on Monday to provide any details - or even publicly acknowledge that the visit is taking place.

"The trade relations are what's most important - that's what has brought us here," Ramaphosa said in Washington on Tuesday. "We want to come out of the United States with a really good trade deal. We want to strengthen those relations and we want to consolidate good relations between our two countries."

The two have been at loggerheads for months, with Trump repeatedly insisting that South Africa's Afrikaner community is facing a "genocide" - a claim amplified by his close adviser Elon Musk, the South African-born tech billionaire, even though it has been widely discredited.

Tensions ramped up days after Trump took office for his second term in January when President Ramaphosa signed into law a controversial bill allowing South Africa's government to expropriate privately owned land without compensation in certain circumstances, when it is deemed "equitable and in the public interest".

This only served to tarnish the image of Africa's biggest economy in the eyes of the Trump administration - already angered by its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In February, the US president announced the suspension of critical aid to South Africa and offered to help members from the Afrikaner community, who are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers, to settle in the US as "refugees".

South Africa's ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was also expelled in March after accusing Trump of "mobilising a supremacism" and trying to "project white victimhood as a dog whistle".

 

The negotiations cannot start in the Oval Office, in front of the cameras"
Anthoni van Nieuwkerk
Professor in international and diplomacy studies at Unisa

 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Rasool was a "race-baiting politician" who was "no longer welcome in our great country".

The arrival of the first group of Afrikaners in the US last week further inflamed the situation, with Trump again doubling down on his claims that white farmers were being "brutally killed" and their "land is being confiscated" - which has been repeatedly denied by the South Africa government.

According to South African political analyst Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, Ramaphosa's decision to go the White House is a "high-risk strategy", especially given Trump's recent hard-line stance.

Prof Van Nieuwkerk predicts two likely scenarios playing out - the first sees "pleasant and cordial" interaction and the reset that South Africa is keen on "if rational minds prevail and if a lot of homework has been done" on both sides.

 

Author: Khanyisile Ngcobo BBC News, Johannesburg

Source: BBC News:

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