When they were hit this week by a Donald Trump social media grenade, panicked South African officials turned to an unconventional diplomatic back channel.
After the US president announced on Sunday that he would halt hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to South Africa, claiming that it was confiscating land and “treating certain classes of people very badly”, Cyril Ramaphosa, the country’s president, turned to one Errol Musk.
“I was asked if I can arrange a quick talk between Ramaphosa and Elon last night… so I did and then they spoke a few minutes later,” the Tesla billionaire’s 78-year-old father told Reuters this week at his home, two hours’ drive from Cape Town.
The overture clearly showed who Mr Ramaphosa thinks has Mr Trump’s ear – and who is potentially the reason why the Maga movement has suddenly turned fire on South Africa.
Senior Republicans have erupted in criticism against South Africa and its new laws on land ownership.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced he would snub a G20 meeting in Johannesburg next month, stating: “South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property.”
Republican senator Ted Cruz accused the South African government of “going out of their way to alienate the United States and our allies”.
Meanwhile, Musk junior, Mr Trump’s so-called “first buddy”, biggest donor and key adviser, accused South Africa of having “openly racist ownership laws”.
His involvement has sparked a wave of criticism that his business interests are dictating American foreign policy, and mounting suspicions in South Africa that a cabal of white South African expats have undue influence over the US president.
Mr Ramaphosa had wanted to correct “misinformation and distortions” about new land reform legislation and called Mr Musk “considering his influence within Trump’s circle”, his office said.
Chris Murphy, a Democrat senator, said on X: “This isn’t complicated to understand.
“Elon Musk’s Starlink was denied a licence in South Africa and so he’s been on a revenge campaign to get them to reverse their decision.
“Our foreign policy is now just billionaire business tactics. What a heartbreaking corruption.”
Mr Musk has been unable to get regulatory approval for Starlink’s satellite broadband service in South Africa because of laws that mean foreign telecom investors must offer black-owned businesses a 30 per cent equity share to qualify for a licence.
But the current Republican storm is focused on a bill signed last month by Mr Ramaphosa that allows land seizures without compensation in certain circumstances.
“One of the ways the South Africans are interpreting this, particularly given that these people are white South Africans, is around historical grievances,” says Christopher Vandome, of Chatham House’s Africa programme.
“And some of what they are saying does chime with some of the political representation in South Africa that does put itself forward as protecting white minority groups.”
Land ownership is a hugely contentious issue in South Africa, where three-quarters of farmland is owned by white people, who make up just 7 per cent of the population. The new law allows for expropriation without compensation only when it is “just and equitable and in the public interest” – such as when the property is unused.
Afriforum, a small lobby group that represents white interests, has been the most vocal critic of the land expropriation laws. At the end of January, the group announced that it would embark on a “targeted international campaign” against the law.
“Then a couple of days later, you get the statements made by Trump,” says Mr Vandome. South Africans have been connecting the dots.
But if this was what triggered Mr Trump’s intervention, it would be a remarkable feat for a fringe protest group.
South Africa’s government has not confiscated any land and even the Democratic Alliance (DA) party, which is in coalition with the ANC, but often accused of being beholden to white business interests, said Mr Trump had this week got the wrong end of the stick.
“It is not true that the act allows land to be seized by the state arbitrarily,” said John Steenhuisen, the DA leader.
Mr Trump’s circle now contains a number of Right-wing billionaire backers with South African roots.
“There is speculation and suspicion in South Africa that these are the voices who are influencing Trump’s positioning on this,” says Mr Vandome.
Foremost among these is Mr Musk, who was raised amid great wealth during the tail end of apartheid, before moving to Canada in his late teens.
He has recalled being unhappy and unfulfilled in his homeland, as well as bullied at school. His parents split up and he is reported to have had a difficult relationship with his father, an engineer.
Mr Musk’s criticism of South Africa is relatively new. “For years, his engagement was pretty low,” says Mr Vandome. But in 2023, he began accusing Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) government of allowing a “genocide” to happen over the killings of some white farmers.
The country’s appalling crime rate does result in attacks on farms, and the culprits can use horrific violence. But experts have said the crime is opportunistic and not a planned extermination, pointing out that blacks are much more likely to be killed than whites.
South Africa’s geopolitical stances will also do it no favours with the new Trump administration and indeed had previously angered the Biden administration.
The ANC has warm historical relations with Russia dating back to Moscow’s support during the apartheid struggle and has said it wants to remain neutral over the Ukraine war. The country is also close to China as a member of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) bloc.
It was South Africa’s insistence this week that Taiwan move its de facto embassy out of Pretoria, in a move widely seen as a sop to Beijing, that infuriated Mr Cruz.
South Africa’s decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice has been another irritant.
Pretoria has suggested it is the victim of deliberate disinformation that can be straightened out in a face-to-face meeting with Mr Trump. Mr Ramaphosa’s office has even said the two leaders might share a round of golf.
But Joel Pollak, who was also born in South Africa and is now editor-at-large at Breitbart News, told News 24 this week that Mr Trump was “going to play hardball”.
He said: “South Africa has adopted a set of economic and foreign policies that are at odds with Western norms, and he wants to see those policies change.”
The row could hammer South Africa’s shaky economy. Its new government of national unity is scrambling to reform its creaking infrastructure, ageing coal-power stations and ailing mining industry. GDP per capita has fallen for two years in a row and is expected to climb by just 0.1 per cent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Mr Trump’s threat to cut aid to South Africa would be a $439 million blow to Aids relief. But bigger economic blows are looming.
South Africa is the largest beneficiary of the US Africa growth and opportunity act (Agoa), which grants preferential treatment for imports from the African continent into the US and is due to expire in September. South Africa’s exports to the US through Agoa in 2023 were worth 1 per cent of its GDP, according to Capital Economics. The US is also a major investor in South Africa, with foreign direct investment totalling $7.2 billion – nearly 2 per cent of South African GDP.
But US aggression could backfire hard for Mr Trump. Cutting ties could push South Africa closer to Russia and China, its counterparts in the Brics alliance, says Mr Vandome.
“It will probably galvanise political support in South Africa for a move away from the West. There’s already quite strong anti-American sentiment in South Africa; it’s seen as a kind of economic imperialist.”
In his state of the nation speech on Thursday, Mr Ramaphosa did not mention Mr Trump but said his country would not be bullied.
He said: “We are witnessing the rise of nationalism and protectionism, the pursuit of narrow interests and the decline of common cause. This is the world that we, as a developing economy, must now navigate.”
Discussion about this post