President Joe Biden will welcome South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House on Friday, part of a renewed US woo for developing world power after its cautious condemnation of Russia.
Ramaphosa’s visit comes a month after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his own trip to South Africa, where he pledged the United States will do more to listen to Africans.
Successive US administrations have focused much of their energies in Africa on countering the growing influence of China, which has become the continent’s dominant trading partner.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a new front in the US struggle for influence in Africa, where many nations have been reluctant to support the West’s campaign to punish and pressure Moscow.
“There are reasons for the perspectives that exist and I think one should never try to pretend that there are no stories,” said South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor.
She pointed to the advance of anti-apartheid forces by the former Soviet Union compared to times of Western cooperation with South Africa’s former white supremacist regime.
“I think we’ve made it pretty clear, in our view, that war helps nobody and that we believe the inhumane actions that we’ve seen against the people of Ukraine can’t be defended by anyone,” she said this week the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
“But what we have said is that many of the public statements made by leading politicians do nothing to improve the situation, because the first prize must be to achieve peace.”
The United States has sought to highlight the invasion’s role in soaring food prices, since Ukraine was one of Africa’s largest grain suppliers.
Russia has tried to blame Western sanctions for the food shortages, an argument dismissed by the United States, which claims they do not restrict agricultural or humanitarian supplies.
– Common ground –
South Africa’s top diplomat broke with the usual polite bipartisanship of foreign dignitaries visiting Washington, and did not mince his words at Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, who notoriously used an epithet to countries in the developing world.
“We get along very well, I think probably better, with the Democrats than with the Republicans,” she said. “You will remember how President Trump described Africa and no one has ever apologized for that.”
Trump was the first US President in decades not to visit sub-Saharan Africa. Biden has yet to visit but has pledged renewed interest, including with a summit of African leaders scheduled in Washington this December.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will speak with Ramaphosa about increasing trade and investment and efforts to address climate change, a key priority for the US administration.
Like other developing countries, South Africa — whose eastern province of Mpumalanga has one of the world’s largest concentrations of coal — argues that developed nations should bear the brunt of efforts to reduce emissions because of their historical responsibility for climate change.
At last year’s climate conference in Glasgow, wealthy nations pledged $8.5 billion in funding for South Africa to move away from coal.
Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington comes amid political troubles at home, three months ahead of a party convention where he will seek a new term.
The South African leader risks impeachment if a new independent panel set up by Parliament finds he was involved in an alleged cover-up of a raid on his luxury farmhouse.
