Pass the popcorn. President Cyril Ramaphosa has told a business gathering that he wants to “do a deal” with US President Donald Trump. “We’ve got to make a deal of one sort or another, on trade issues, on diplomatic issues, on political issues, a whole span of issues,” he told a Goldman Sachs event on Thursday. Just a few days earlier he was saying he didn’t approve of talking to the heads of other countries in public.
A neat conceit, but the White House-South Africa brouhaha was sort of dying down until Ramaphosa lit it up again by putting his name — along with the presidents of Malaysia and Colombia — on an article in Foreign Policy magazine sharply critical of the US and Trump’s approach to Israel and its war on Hamas in Gaza. Trump now wants to turn Gaza into a resort area with bombed-out Palestinians absorbed nearby.
Trump’s proposal, says the Ramaphosa article, “strikes at the very foundations of international law, which the global community has a duty to defend. Such actions, if pursued, would constitute a grave violation of international law.”
The fourth name on the piece is Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, a left-wing policy advocate who would have written the piece weeks ago, when things were much different. Ramaphosa would have been shocked to be reminded it was about to appear. He tweeted a brief, nervous groan before deleting it and posting a more measured defence of a renewed commitment to “internationalism”, which he says the piece represents.
The point, though, is not internationalism and certainly not land expropriation in South Africa, paid or otherwise. The point is Israel and the huge support it enjoys, whatever it does, in the US.
It is just a fact and to get to do his deal with Trump, Ramaphosa is going to have to prepare himself for something of an ordeal. Anyone who watched the disgraceful ambush by Trump and his deputy JD Vance on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House on Friday will know what I mean.
When — if — Ramaphosa is finally allowed into the Oval Office, Trump will sit him in a golden chair before a bevy of selected journalists armed with poisonous questions about Israel, Hamas, murder, Iran, friendship, terrorism, China, the Lady R and our failure, ever, to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They’ll make mincemeat of his assertion to the Goldman Sachs meeting that “our international policy has always been to play a neutral role and to be nonaligned. We’ve played that role throughout”.
And then they’ll want to hear what he has to offer. With Trump, you have to trade. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was in Washington this week with a letter from King Charles inviting The Donald to make a second state visit to Britain. Trump was delirious.
We're in our underwear, tripping over ourselves as we try to get dressed and answer the yellow-haired beast banging on our door downstairs
What might Ramaphosa offer on land expropriation? On China? Iran? Israel? Alternatives to the dollar? Has he got anything nice and shiny that Trump might want and that doesn’t cost him too much back at home?
Ramaphosa's dilemma is of his own making. South Africa had no formal, functioning, diplomatic representation in Washington for years until Ebrahim Rasool was hurriedly appointed to a second tour as ambassador after Trump won re-election last November.
We were mollycoddled by the Biden White House and now we are unprepared, shocked and awed, first by Trump's victory and then by his first month in office. We're in our underwear, tripping over ourselves as we try to get dressed and answer the yellow-haired beast banging on our door downstairs.
Joel Pollak, the South African-born Trump supporter most likely to become the new US ambassador to South Africa, makes it clear the ball is now in South Africa's court. His advice on X has been that if you want Trump on side then “compromise, reach a deal and you'll be treated well. Attack Trump instead? Watch out”.
That would explain the now-deleted Ramaphosa tweet as the FP article appeared. Another unnecessary river to cross. Pollak posted on X after reading the piece that “sanctions vs South African officials are on the table after Cyril Ramaphosa co-published ... in Foreign Policy attacking Israel on Gaza (with no mention of Hamas or terror) and threatening to arrest [Israeli premier] Netanyahu and criticising Trump for sanctioning the ICC”.
Sanctions would be absurd but that doesn't matter. What Israel did in Gaza was unbearable. But however much South Africa may cry its defiance, Trump now requires a bending of the knee and an offering from us — and in public. This is how he does business and Ramaphosa's choice will be to kiss his ass or stand up to him. It's tough, but you can't suck up to bullies. We went limp when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Let's not make the same mistake with Trump.
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