South Africa dumps Trump: Government cuts its losses

Kgothatso Madisa and Lizeka Tandwa(Sunday Times) 30 November 2025

President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington in May. The relationship between the two presidents has never recovered from the American’s attempt to humiliate his South African counterpart.

President Cyril Ramaphosa says US President Donald Trump has “disdain” for protocol, so much so that Pretoria has now decided to confront Washington head-on, with highly placed sources saying Ramaphosa had grown tired of trying to reason with a “bully”.

The Sunday Times can reveal that in a development that could collapse the tariff and trade negotiations and further strain relations between South Africa and the US, Ramaphosa’s administration has given up on trying to fix its relationship with the Trump administration and has decided to “stand up to the bully”, regardless of the repercussions to follow.

Senior government officials are adamant that whatever punishment is meted out to South Africa, it would be “short-lived pain”, and that it would be worth it to stamp SA’s authority in the geopolitical arena.

Trump announced a few days ago that South Africa will not be allowed to participate in G20 programmes in 2026, including the leaders’ summit, which the US is to host in Miami, Florida.

Trump went as far as saying South Africa does not deserve to be part of the G20 but several countries, including European allies, have come out in defence of South Africa.

Ramaphosa, through his spokesperson Vincent Magwenya, told the Sunday Times that Trump’s actions cannot go unchallenged.

“The world cannot allow this brazen disdain for rules and established norms of diplomatic engagements. The general disregard for rules is even being challenged in the US. Now, it’s being brought to global multilateral platforms. It can’t go unchallenged in global fora,” Ramaphosa said.

“And you can’t allow a precedent where this becomes acceptable regardless of where it emanates from.”

According to the sources: “The sense from Pretoria is that regardless of the consequences, it’s time to stand up to the bully and there is an understanding and an appreciation that whatever follows is going to be short term-pain – and in resisting the bullying, there’s long-term gain”.

South Africa will stop being “measured” in its response against the onslaught from the White House as Trump’s actions “have now ignited the fighting spirit that the country used to confront and defeat the apartheid regime”.

“Even against the mighty US we will resist, as we resisted against the might of colonialists, so that’s what the US is triggering out of us. It doesn’t mean that because of state power in the past three decades [that] we’ve lost that resistance DNA in us,” said the source.

“We’re going to resist this, understanding that resistance will invite some form of pain, but we also know that that pain is short-term.

“There’s not going to be any soft response to this because for the longest time we’ve been measured in our response against lies, we’ve been measured in our response against attempts to humiliate the president when he was making an effort to reset the relationship.”

Sources say Pretoria has accepted that the relationship at the highest level of political leadership cannot be rescued.

“What we are looking at now are functional aspects of the relationship; business to business, ensuring that US businesses feel welcomed in South Africa, the environment is conducive for their investment, our engagement with the American civil society must continue, people to people exchanges must continue.”

Meanwhile, an insider in the US embassy said that Washington was likely to walk back its decision not to invite South Africa, given the backlash it will receive from its allies in Europe. They said while Trump will be intent on seeing out his decision to ban South Africa from participating in the G20 during his presidency in 2026, Trump’s advisers would be able to persuade him against it.

International relations and co-operation minister Ronald Lamola’s comments during a CNN interview two weeks ago that the Trump administration was pursuing white supremacy have not gone down well with the administration, and he may serve as collateral damage, according to an insider.

A Presidency official in Pretoria said if the White House were to ban Lamola from attending its foreign ministers’ meetings and the G20 leaders’ summit, it would be pitting Ramaphosa against his minister.

“But more importantly, you are pitting the president against his party. Ronald is a senior ranking member of the ANC. He is the minister of foreign affairs, and if Trump says come to the G20 but come without your minister, he is dividing the political leadership of the country.

“Two things may happen: the president may say the deputy minister can go, or we must be there in case the biggest fight is at the sherpa level. If our sherpa and sous-sherpas participate, they can push hard to get everyone behind key thematic issues that we want to sustain from the South Africa-led G20 to the US-led G20. That for us will be a win, whether Ronald and the president [are] there or not.

“But if they decide to ban Ronald, it’s going to put the president in a very difficult position where he may end up not wanting to be subjected to it because the ANC will rally behind Ronald, and it would work perfectly for Ronald’s political ambitions and elevate him. So the president will have to consider the domestic implications and what his detractors will say in reaction to this.”
https://www.sundaytimes.timeslive.co.za/news/2025-11-29-south-africa-loses-patience-with-bully-trump-over-g20/

Back




© Copyright BRICS From Below