The diplomatic-trade crisis between the US and South Africa keeps unfolding and worsening, but away from the attention of the media, since President Trump's astonishing Oval Office confrontation with South African President Ramaphosa over farm murders and race-baiting. We have asked our friend Ernst Van Zyl, who works for AfriForum, a human rights NGO in South Africa, to write an article explaining the situation for an American audience.

Ernst van Zyl is Head of Public Relations at AfriForum and the director of the documentary film Selfbestuur (Self-management). Ernst obtained a master’s degree (cum laude) in Political Science at Stellenbosch University. Ernst usually publishes contributions on X (formerly known as Twitter) and YouTube under his pseudonym Conscious Caracal.

On Sunday, the 2nd of February, a diplomatic storm erupted that has been cemented as 2025’s defining development for South Africa. The first raindrop was the following social media post by US President Donald Trump:

What followed has been one of the worst diplomatic crises since the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994.

Trump followed up his warning to South Africa with an executive order that, among other things, froze aid and enabled Afrikaners to apply for refugee status. The South African coalition government, led by the ANC, was slow to respond, but when it did, the spin was in. The defining word of their response, straight from a public relations focus group, was “misinformation”.

I will unpack and analyse the crisis at large, as well as the issues Trump raised, which include, but are not limited to, threats to private property rights, racially discriminatory legislation, farm murders and the chant “Kill the Boer”.

A week before Trump’s initial post, South Africa’s president signed into law the Expropriation Act, which is a direct assault against private property rights. Numerous high-profile ANC politicians, on multiple occasions, have confirmed it is aimed at enabling the state to expropriate private property without compensation.

Farm murders are, in fact, a serious issue and are encouraged and romanticised by powerful high-profile politicians such as Julius Malema, through chants like “Kill the Boer”. Despite desperate attempts by the ANC, EFF and their allies to whitewash this chant as “just a metaphor”, it has a well-documented history of being a direct call to violence. Notably, when Malema was asked under oath to pledge that he would “never call for the slaughtering of white people,” he refused. After Malema did this chant on Human Rights Day 2025, President Ramaphosa was urged to condemn the chant. In response, the president’s spokesperson confirmed that the president will do no such thing.

It is a fact that the South African government currently has over 142 race-based laws, many of which are explicitly discriminatory. Earlier this year, for example, a professional cricket team was kicked out of a tournament and fined because of racial quotas. Also in 2025, the major South African company Bidvest was exposed for having a school bursary programme that excludes white children. These are just some of the most recent examples of the South African government’s well-documented race-mad policies.

Another major breakthrough was when Elon Musk shared AfriForum’s documentary – Is Trump Right About South Africa? – which documents the realities of race laws, landgrabs, farm murders and “Kill the Boer”, pushing it to over 42 million views on X.

US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is also a major player in this saga. Shortly after Trump’s first opening salvo, Rubio fired another shot across the bow with the following statement:

Rubio sent a strong message regarding the “Kill the Boer” chant as well: 

The 2025 G20 summit, which was supposed to be a crown jewel occasion for South Africa, was quickly becoming tainted by the diplomatic clash. The US did not send a delegation to the G20 Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists in South Africa, and the US Treasury’s Scott Bessent commented that he will skip the meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors as well. It was also reported that the White House directed federal agencies to stop work regarding the G20 Conference.

Amidst the unfolding crisis, multiple South African non-governmental and political party delegations visited Washington, DC. The first was a joint delegation from the civil rights organisation AfriForum, which represents over 300 000 members, with a particular focus on Afrikaners, as well as the Afrikaans trade union Solidarity. This delegation met with senior White House officials with the aim of, among others, saving the AGOA trade agreement, providing facts on the issues raised by Trump, and lobbying for sanctions that specifically target corrupt or extremist politicians, rather than the whole country. Other notable delegations comprised representatives from parties such as the Democratic Alliance and the Freedom Front Plus, as well as the Southern African Agri Initiative (Saai) and the National Employers’ Association of South Africa (NEASA).

The United States reiterated the same preconditions to fix its relations with South Africa to all these delegations. The South African government must: (1) classify farm attacks as a priority crime (a unique crime that deserve a unique counterstrategy), as has been done with crimes such as cash-in-transit heists, rhino poaching, political assassinations, gender-based violence, gang violence, and more; (2) publicly and unreservedly condemn the “Kill the Boer” chant; (3) undertake that no land expropriation without fair market compensation will take place; and (4) exempt US entities from racially discriminatory criteria.

The South African government’s response was a combination of denialism and “we will not be bullied!” bravado. It focused its energy on targeting and scapegoating its domestic critics, in particular, the AfriForum/Solidarity delegation, whom it hurled “treason” accusations at. Soon, it was announced that the police had opened a high treason investigation into this delegation. Investigative journalist Marie-Louise Antoni meticulously documented how a media-stoked frenzy emboldened the state to pursue these charges.

The South African government sent a delegation of its own to meet with Trump in the White House in May, but to describe this meeting as anything but a disaster would be disingenuous. It started calmly but soon turned into a nightmare for the South African delegation after President Trump uttered, “dim the lights,” and played a video exposing the horrors of farm murders and the “Kill the Boer” chant. One of the most revealing interactions was when Trump showed footage of one of the largest farm murder protests in South Africa’s history, which happened during Ramaphosa’s presidency. In response, Ramaphosa asked, bewildered, “Where is this?” to which Trump correctly responded, “South Africa.”

During this meeting, Ramaphosa tried his best to sweep his government’s extremist policies under the rug, but as soon as he landed back in South Africa and was in front of more friendly media, he defended the “Kill the Boer” chant and doubled down on his support for racially discriminatory policies.

South Africa’s diplomats were also involved in a series of scandals in 2025. In March, Rubio revealed that South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, was “no longer welcome” in the country after he made comments smearing President Trump and his supporters as racists and white supremacists.

Rasool was replaced by a “special envoy to the United States”, Mcebisi Jonas. However, he, too, was engulfed in controversy. Shortly after his appointment, Jonas’ past inflammatory comments – in which he called Trump a “racist” and a “narcissist” – resurfaced. Later, it was reported that the US government denied his visa and rejected his credentials. Therefore, since Rasool’s expulsion in March, South Africa has effectively been, and continues to be, without diplomatic representation in Washington, DC during this worsening crisis.

To add insult to injury, in July, the news broke that the U.S.-South African Bilateral Relations Review Act of 2025, which enables targeted sanctions against corrupt and extremist South African politicians, passed a US House Committee. Also in July, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor revealed that it had concluded a trip to South Africa to investigate farm attacks and the breakdown of the rule of law, finding that farm murders are not just “normal crime.”

In August, Trump’s 30% tariff bombshell exploded on South Africa. Although its implementation was previously suspended for 90 days to allow for negotiations, the South African government chose to approach the situation with a head-in-the-sand ostrich strategy. They later desperately requested an extension, but the US confirmed that there would be no extension of the deadline for the tariffs – a debacle that reminds of the Aesop fable of the grasshopper and the ants.

Unlike many other countries, which were quick to start negotiations, the South African government’s 90-day period was characterised by denialism, a lackadaisical attitude, and repeated expression of its bewilderment at the situation. The allocated negotiation period didn’t end with a bang for them, but rather with the whimper of a rushed attempt to cobble together a last-minute deal. Predictably, the ANC tried to blame their domestic critics for their diplomatic failures, but Joshua Meservey of the Hudson Institute demolished these unfounded allegations.

Even though the South African government adamantly denied the existence of its racially discriminatory laws, the Director-General of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation confirmed that racial laws were a major obstacle to reaching a trade deal with the US.

In conclusion, a party whose supporters chant “One bullet, one American” cannot act surprised when diplomacy eventually sours with the United States. The ANC will first have to accept the reality of their own radical policies and rhetoric, as well as the destructive and immoral consequences thereof, before they have any chance of negotiating with Trump in South Africa’s interest. The first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge that it exists. Fighting Trump is one thing, but fighting reality is futile. As Afrikaner writer C.J. Langenhoven pointed out, “A man who has to resort to a lie often finds that he has taken refuge in a house that has no back door.”

SEE ALSO: Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry interviews Ernst Van Zyl on the Sphere Podcast (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts).