Rebuked by Trump but praised at home: How Ramaphosa might gain from US showdown

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation went to Washington this week hoping for a boost and a reset after months of acrimony with the Donald Trump administration.

Instead they got brutal, high-stakes diplomacy, peppered with insults, and played out to millions across the world in real time. It was like a painful job review carried out by a boss on a loud hailer.

Praised by many for remaining composed and reconciliatory in the face of an exercised Trump, while also criticised by some for not responding more forcefully to Tump’s accusations, reality awaits Ramaphosa back in South Africa where he and his African National Congress (ANC) face pressures on multiple fronts.

The ANC has been in an uneasy coalition – or government of national unity (GNU) – with 10 other parties for almost a year, forced into sharing power after dismal results in national elections.

There have been public fights between parties inside and outside the coalition over controversial land and healthcare legislation and attempts to push a budget through parliament which would hike taxes for the most vulnerable. That almost saw the end of the coalition earlier this year.

The economy is stagnating, crime rates are sky-high as is corruption and unemployment, public services are largely dysfunctional and infrastructure is crumbling. There also seems to be very little accountability for those who break the law.

This has meant uncomfortable and intense questions about Ramaphosa’s policies by various political parties, as well as civil society.

Meanwhile the ANC itself is unstable, as opposing factions begin jockeying for position ahead of a crucial elective conference in 2027 which is likely to see a new party leader emerge.

At the same time, Ramaphosa’s loudest critics, such as the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema – who featured prominently in Trump’s discredited dossier of “evidence” that genocide was being committed against white Afrikaners in South Africa – as well as former President Jacob Zuma, have been getting louder still.

So Ramaphosa was looking for a trade deal, desperately needing the business and stability this would bring to South Africa to stimulate real and lasting economic growth and put people back to work.

Ramaphosa said as much to Trump on Wednesday – that US investment was needed to help tackle the joblessness that was a key factor in the country’s high crime rate.

The risk that the Agoa trade deal with the US may not be renewed later this year because of Trump’s isolationist worldview have made this all the more urgent. This gave South Africa duty-free access to the US market for certain goods, and is credited with having boosted South Africa’s fragile economy.

But the talk of trade was overshadowed by Trump’s Oval Office ambush over discredited claims that white South Africans were being persecuted.

However, there may still be a silver lining for Ramaphosa, and by extension his party, at least domestically.

Yes, the to-do list is impossibly long, and yes the pressure for the South African president to hold a coalition and party together that is messy and deeply uncomfortable will be waiting for him on his return. And yes the ANC is in the weakest position since it came to power 30 years ago. But it’s still in power, even if it’s sharing it.

Crucially, Ramaphosa’s conduct with Trump reminded South Africans of his diplomatic pedigree, and of his importance to the country’s rules-based order.

He is, along with Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s greatest ever alliance builder and facilitator. He was at the nerve centre of negotiating an end to the racist system of apartheid in the early 1990s, and in keeping South Africa together when many had prophesised its fatal fracture. He has stayed calm, smiled and faced down far more bitter opponents before.

More recently, he steered the country out of the bleak “state capture” years of the Zuma administration and then through the difficult Covid lockdowns. And also kept the ANC on its feet – just – when it hobbled home after the 2024 elections. He then he took a wounded ANC into coalition politics and survived as president despite opposition from within his own party.

“I believe if a snap poll was done today, we would see his personal ratings go up,” says South African editor and founder of explain.co.za Verashni Pillay.

“He excels in these high-pressure situations. He has this wealth of negotiating experience in arguably far more tense environments where there has been actual blood on the streets and imminent civil war. That’s why you saw him looking particularly relaxed. He’s masterful at diffusing tension at key moments.”

Surveys have consistently referenced the Ramaphosa Effect – the most recent from the Social Research Foundation last month which suggests that without him, the ANC would haemorrhage support even more than it already has, despite equally consistent criticism of the South African president that he is too slow and indecisive in tackling the country’s biggest problems. To a large extent, that’s still the case.

But events this week, ostensibly meant to bully, ridicule and embarrass Ramaphosa around the world, actually reminded many South Africans of what he brings to the government and the country – a constant, stable and predictable centre.

“I think what happened in the Oval Office has reinforced the idea of ‘If not Ramaphosa then who?'” says Pillay.

In fact, some think that what South Africans saw in the White House will actually strengthen the GNU – backed as it is by big business, which will ultimately reassure South Africans who were watching the drama.

“The meeting displayed a united front from South Africa, a public-private performance that the country has been promoting for over a decade. This for the GNU is great political theatre that translates into political capital,” says Itumeleng Makgetla, a political analyst at the University of Pretoria.

And indeed, the optics were all there. Ramaphosa facilitated a passionate rebuttal of the worst of Trump’s misinformation through interventions from his partner in the GNU – Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen – and one of South Africa’s wealthiest people, Johann Rupert – both white South Africans. If Trump understood the power of performance, so too did Ramaphosa.

“I do think the GNU comes out of this looking quite strong,” says Pillay. “The GNU happened at a really good moment for South Africa ahead of this crisis. If it was just the ANC government in the room, [Ramaphosa’s arguments] wouldn’t have landed. But being able to say that we have these parties that represent white people in government is such a strong statement.”

So what does this all mean for those on the extreme flanks of South African politics and discourse?

After the lights dimmed, Julius Malema was shown by Trump singing a song that some say calls for the murder of white farmers, although a court has ruled it is just political rhetoric. Might he reap domestic political capital from being thrust into the global spotlight?

Yes, say some. “For those in the country that are quite tired of the diatribe from President Trump and the US… this will likely strengthen Malema [and] parties like the MK because it’ll basically be saying: ‘Look, surely we can’t be bending over backwards for such individuals and lies,'” says South African political analyst Prof Kagiso “TK” Pooe from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

But Pillay disagrees.

“This will not translate into political power for Malema. Most of his top leaders have already defected to Jacob Zuma’s MK party. Things for the EFF were not looking good, even before Wednesday. Julius Malema’s brand of politics, of wanting everything to burn down, of blaming white people for everything… is entertaining but it hasn’t won votes because most South Africans don’t want their country to be burnt down.”

Having said that, there is a sizeable group of South Africans who want faster and more radical change – the election results for the MK party, a breakaway faction of the ANC, shows that.

And what of Afriforum – the Afrikaner interest group that tugged at the ears of Trump’s supporters for a number of years by lobbying and spreading right-wing propaganda, hoping to be heard?

Trump’s discredited audio-visual presentation of what he said was the systematic extermination of white Afrikaner farmers was the high-water mark of their lobbying efforts, amplified as they were in the Oval Office.

Yet, despite extraordinarily high levels of violent crime in South Africa, many are angry at the group. “In a way, I think a lot of South Africans – even those that don’t support the ANC – can finally see that there are certain people that are not for South Africa. Those people have been singled out and that’s a positive in a way,” says Prof Pooe.

“We know a large number of Afrikaans speakers are people of colour,” says Pillay. “Afriforum dealt a severe blow to the cause of Afrikaners in South Africa by racialising it.”

Afriforum’s Kallie Kriel has defended the group’s conduct on a local television channel, Newzroom Afrika: “It wasn’t Afriforum chanting genocidal calls for someone to be killed. If President Ramaphosa went there to tell the Americans that they don’t know what’s going on, they will see that as an insult because they have an embassy in South Africa and a State Department and intelligence services,” he said.

As the dust settles from Wednesday’s drama, Ramaphosa will be watching and calculating. He has consistently been at the centre of key inflection points in recent South African history when some kind of a rupture has occurred and the country has had to change course dramatically. He reads these moments so well.

Wednesday’s upheaval in Trump’s White House may not have been the economic and diplomatic reset with the US that was hoped, but could yet mark a dramatic reset for Ramaphosa and the GNU with the South African public.

Additional reporting by Khanyisile Ngcobo in Johannesburg