JOHANNESBURG: For the workers whose livelihoods hang on preferential access to the American market, and for the business owners watching relations between Pretoria and Washington deteriorate week by week, the US midterm elections have offered something rare in recent months: a reason for hope.
President Cyril Ramaphosa voiced that optimism on Wednesday, telling reporters that the Democrats’ rout of the Republicans heralded what he called a “new era in world relations” and could help thaw the strained ties between South Africa and the United States.
“I do think that this group is going to introduce a new era in world relations,” Ramaphosa said when asked about the Democratic result. He spoke after casting his vote in local government elections, a moment that placed the global and the local side by side. The same day South Africans chose their municipal representatives, the president was weighing what a shifted American political landscape might mean for the country’s economic future.
“We’re hoping that on a bilateral basis, there will be a coming together of minds where we will find a proper path forward on geopolitics as well as on trade matters and investment matters,” he said.
For many South Africans, the stakes are concrete and immediate. Washington this week removed South Africa from a trade deal that offers eligible sub-Saharan African countries preferential access to the US market, the culmination of mounting tensions over a range of policy disputes. The exclusion from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, known as AGOA, applies to South Africa and Rwanda alike and takes effect on January 1. There are fears it could cost the battered local economy thousands of jobs, a prospect that weighs heavily on households and communities dependent on export-linked work.
South Africa is the biggest beneficiary of the AGOA programme, which makes the exclusion more than a diplomatic slight. It touches pay packets, factory floors and family budgets across the country’s most industrialised economy. The country is also the United States’ largest trading partner on the African continent, home to more than 500 US businesses and some 30,000 US citizens, ties that bind ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic, not just governments.
The relationship has frayed over race, trade and diplomacy. Washington has cut aid, imposed tariffs, expelled South Africa’s ambassador and boycotted a G20 summit held in Johannesburg. These disputes have unfolded against the backdrop of the country’s unresolved legacy of white minority rule, a history that continues to shape political debate at home and perceptions abroad.
The personal frictions have been sharp as well. Last year, President Donald Trump berated Ramaphosa in the Oval Office over discredited claims of a “white genocide”, an encounter that drew international attention and underscored how fraught the bilateral relationship had become.
Whether the midterm result truly changes the trajectory remains to be seen. What Ramaphosa’s remarks make clear is that Pretoria is looking for an opening, and that the people most invested in finding one are those whose jobs, businesses and communities depend on the flow of trade between the two countries. As reported by African Insider, whose full coverage is available at https://www.africaninsider.com/politics/could-us-election-result-rescue-strained-south-africa-us-relations-ramaphosa-weighs-in/, the president framed the Democratic victory not as a partisan matter but as a potential turning point for how nations deal with one another.
For now, South Africans can watch and wait. The AGOA exclusion takes effect on January 1, and until then, the hope expressed after a day of voting at home is that a new Congress might bring a new willingness to talk.