Why Has Trump Called South Africa's Ramaphosa to the Office?

Why has South Africa's president been summoned to the White House? The U.S. presidency is centered on spectacle and transaction: So what cards does SA hold? Or, what spectacle would serve MAGA goals?

Those of us who attended public high schools in apartheid South Africa knew what it meant to be summoned to the principal’s office. You were not going to leave without “cuts”, the welts left by his bamboo cane on your bum. You’d brace yourself to try not to cry despite the pain, remember to intone the ritual “Thank you, Sir” with as much contempt as you could muster, and return smiling defiantly through the pain to your classmates, marking the number of strokes on the back of your tie to keep a record…

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has been summoned to the White House on Wednesday. And while the “cuts” he can expect are metaphorical rather than physical, it’s an educated guess that the purpose of the invitation is the public humiliation of the President of a country that has had the temerity to invoke international law against the U.S.-enabled genocide in Palestine.

Of course, Ramaphosa is not a school pupil who has no option but to heed the principal’s call. He’s the President of a sovereign country, and had the option of following the example of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who despite being heavily dependent on U.S. backing, simply declined to visit while the U.S. was pushing a plan to force Palestinian refugees into his country. But given that the South Africans have agreed to visit on Wednesday, it’s worth exploring what to expect.

Ramaphosa arrives barely a week after the tawdry spectacle of the Trump Administration welcoming a motley crew of “refugees” claiming to be Afrikaans farmers fleeing what the U.S. public is told is a “white genocide”. Of course, everyone knows the “white genocide” claim is a racist fable rendered even more grotesque by the fact that it’s spewed out even while the U.S. is enabling a real genocide in Gaza. It seems that even Elon Musk’s AI Grok was calling out the lie before it was instructed instead to repeat it, and then did so in response to any sort of question it received one day last week. That the white genocide/refugee story has drawn much mirth and mockery across social media is reassuring, but it’s worth remembering that the U.S. media landscape was long ago shattered by the advent of cable, then the Internet, then social media — there’s no skepticism of the “white genocide” fable in the MAGA media ecosystem that produced, and sustains the Trump presidency.

And Trump gave a hint of what to expect when, days after the visit was announced, he repeated the “white genocide” lie. It’s important to remember the purpose of this falsehood in the Trump schema: A major theme of his administration’s assault on U.S. institutions has been to reverse post-Civil Rights era progress to any form of redress of centuries of structural racism — to rally white voters in support of government by and for billionaires by persuading them that they face an existential threat from “DEI” (the limited efforts to address U.S. racial inequality through affirmative action). This assault fits into a wider white nationalist mythology about being “replaced”, and it clearly behooves the conjurers of this scare story to scream the lie of “white genocide” as a warning of what lies at the end of the path of DEI. Ramaphosa was mistaken last week when he referred to the 49 self-styled Afrikaners who landed at Dulles Airport as “cowards” — no, if anything they’re useful idiots deployed in a theatrical performance that has nothing to do with them, or South Africa.

Coming back to the question of Trump’s purpose in inviting Ramaphosa, consider the challenge posed by Trump to Ukraine’s President Zelensky a couple of months ago: What cards does South Africa have to play?

South African officials speak hopefully about “resetting” the relationship and “setting the record straight” about the land expropriation bill denounced by Trumpers as confiscating property on racial lines. Let’s just say that sounds like trying to fact-check a professional wrestling bout — the participants know the scenario they’re performing is not real, but the purpose of their pantomime is to titillate the audience by enacting their fantasies.

The “white genocide” fable isn’t based on a misconception; it’s rooted in the white-nationalist imaginary that has been central to the MAGA project — a scenario in which white, Christian identity is under mortal threat from brown immigrants and from any moves to acknowledge and redress the legacy of slavery and genocide on which America was built.

So, the problem facing President Ramaphosa is that while claims of “white genocide” are demonstrably false, that doesn’t really matter to his host.

Trump has unceremoniously trashed the entire edifice of U.S. engagement with the rest of world built during the Cold War and neoliberal Davos era. His speech in Saudi Arabia trashing the neocons and the disastrous history of U.S. “liberal” imperialist military intervention and “nation building” in the Middle East was a refreshing reminder of how much the game has changed.

Today’s America is a mercantilist imperial power whose relationships are principally transactional. To the extent that these relationships are guided by any political dimension, they would be entirely rooted in U.S. domestic politics. Israel is the obvious example: Israel has had no strategic value to the United States for many decades, but it has been a major domestic political issue in a system where donor money is infinitely more powerful than the votes of the citizenry — and whose constitutional design gives vastly disproportionate influence to rural white voters.

(It’s worth remembering, here, as the Daily Maverick points out (video), that some of the most vociferous barkers pushing the “white genocide” agenda in the U.S. Congress also happen to be some of the largest recipients of AIPAC political contributions.)

Consider what we know about the Trump Administration when trying to establish why Ramaphosa has been invited, and why Trump continues to double down publicly on lies slandering South Africa days ahead of the visit. Consider, also, the absolutely central place of entertainment-media spectacle in U.S. politics in general, an idiom in which Trump is the undisputed champion.

If an encounter with a foreign leader isn’t recorded and disseminated in ways that serve his domestic political agenda and need to project authority, there’s no reason to believe Trump would bother. What spectacle, then, is planned for Ramaphosa?

Given that Trump continues to portray his guest as the leader responsible for a “white genocide” driving the televised arrival of “refugees” on these shores, it’s a safe bet that he’s not prioritizing trade or anything else. So, what cards does South Africa have? It sounded a little pitiful to see SA officials signaling concern for peace in Ukraine as an area of alignment. Trump doesn’t give a toss about even the NATO countries’ views on Ukraine, why would he possibly care about South Africa’s position?

Moreover, the specific sanctions facing South Africa — cutting USAID funds, refusal to renew AGOA trade terms — align with the broader orientation of the Trump Administration on questions of trade and aid. And refusing to be part of the G20 is nothing special — multilateral institutions are no longer of any interest to America.

Unless South Africa holds some asset deemed essential to the mercantilist project (not obvious what it might be), Ramaphosa holds no “cards” in Trump’s view. But he represents an opportunity for reality TV pantomime. It’s hard to imagine the U.S. purpose on Wednesday being anything more than the ritual humiliation of a President branded as the face of “white genocide” because his government dared to challenge Washington’s own genocide in Gaza. It’s not even outlandish to imagine the presser being staged for the MAGA base as some form of show-trial mimicry, with Secretary of State Rubio and VP Vance playing prosecutors and Trump weighing in as judge.

South Africa should expect to be issued with a series of intolerable demands to change its domestic and foreign policies as the price for resetting relations (in the way that Ivy League universities have). Ramaphosa’s team have already made clear they have no intention of backing down on the ICJ case to stop the genocide in Gaza. That’s to be welcomed by broader humanity, but won’t be acceptable to a U.S. administration that literally imposes sanctions on the International Criminal Court. South Africa will be told who it can and can’t have relations with, and read the proverbial riot act against efforts to redress the legacy of apartheid — oh, and you can be sure President Nelson Mandela’s name will be invoked by the U.S. side against any redress of apartheid.

President Ramaphosa is known for maintaining a calm and dignified demeanor — qualities that will likely be tested during his time at the White House. But he’s in a no-win situation. But while his host may hold the economic levers to inflict pain on every corner of the planet, Trump holds little moral authority outside of his own, rather narrow ideological base. Despite the pain that will come, much of the world has recognized the need for a different global order to the U.S.-dominated one we’ve known until now.

As we learned at our apartheid-era South African high schools, the challenge was to take our licks from the contemptible clowns the regime had placed in charge of our schools, maintaining a dignified defiance as we returned to the solidarity of our classmates in defiance of the authorities. At this point, Ramaphosa’s visit looks like a no-win situation for South Africa — but he can count on the solidarity of the Global South. Whatever happens in the White House, he’ll know, at least, that the vast majority of humanity aligns with South Africa’s efforts to hold Israel, and its U.S. enabler, to account.