Biden keen to keep Ramaphosa ‘in the tent’ at Washington talks

11 Sep 2022

Divergent stances on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are unlikely to be the focus of the meeting, say diplomats. Subjects under discussion will be trade, the energy transition and nuclear power.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House on Friday, 16 September, will probably be about the US keeping SA “in the tent” rather than about chastising it for its controversial non-aligned position on Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Biden initiated the meeting with Ramaphosa, which suggests the US is trying to ensure South Africa, and Africa more broadly, do not drift further into the Russia camp. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, Western powers and Russia have beaten a path to Africa to elicit its support.

Washington certainly doesn’t like Pretoria’s failure to condemn Russia for its invasion. But officials say seven months into the war, South Africa and the US know each other’s positions on the Ukraine war very well, so that won’t be a focus of the meeting. Instead, they will concentrate on the familiar pillars of their relations: health, climate, trade and infrastructure.

However, Ramaphosa might seek assurances over South Africa’s concerns about legislation now before the US Congress that would empower the administration to impose sanctions on Russian companies that do business in Africa – and also to sanction the African companies and other entities they do business with.

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act in April.

Ramaphosa’s ANC has a potential interest in the bill because its investment arm, Chancellor House, gets substantial dividends from a joint venture with sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg in the United Manganese of Kalahari mining venture in South Africa.

The legislation is stalled in the US Senate.

Pretoria takes considerable credit for that, saying the South African embassy in Washington lobbied energetically against the bill.

“White House insiders told us President Biden will not sign that bill into law,” an official said. “We don’t think it’ll pass in the next house.”

A Washington source agreed, saying: “In the highly unlikely event that the bill passes the Senate, it is expected Biden would not sign the bill and then it would go back to the Senate and die there.”

Inviting Ramaphosa to the White House so soon after he met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for the US-SA Strategic Dialogue in Pretoria last month, “attests to the importance Biden attaches to the US-SA relationship”, says Anthony Carroll, a Washington-based Africa specialist.

A White House spokesperson told Daily Maverick that Ramaphosa and Biden would build on their almost hour-long phone call in April – when Ramaphosa said Biden had been “very warm towards South Africa” – “to discuss issues of deep importance to both of our nations, including trade and investment, infrastructure, climate, energy and health.

“They also intend to spend time discussing South Africa’s leading role in the world across a range of global issues.

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“Americans have long viewed South Africa as a strategic partner and friend to the US,” added the spokesperson. “We have a strong network of people-to-people relationships with businesses, non-governmental organisations, universities, cultural institutions, and individual citizens.

“As a strong and vibrant democracy and a country committed to defending human rights, South Africa can play a powerful role to uphold those ideals in multilateral institutions, including the United Nations.”

Biden could press Ramaphosa on progress South Africa has made in implementing the Just Energy Transition Programme (JETP) in which the US, EU, UK, France and Germany have pledged $8.5-billion to help the country shift from its dependence on coal-fired electricity production towards renewables – while trying to preserve the livelihoods of workers in the coal industry.

Some partners are concerned Pretoria is not transforming its energy sector fast enough. They want to show off the JETP as a model for other countries at the COP 27 climate conference in Egypt in November.

Ramaphosa and Biden could also discuss nuclear issues, Business Day reported recently. The US and South Africa have just extended a treaty on cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear power for another four years. More controversially, Ramaphosa could reiterate concerns about the lack of nuclear disarmament by the US and other nuclear weapons states, a Pretoria source said. This saw the collapse of the recent review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Ramaphosa’s visit would “underscore the value of African partnership, as outlined in the US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa recently announced in Pretoria – a strategy that articulates our new vision for a 21st century US-African partnership”, the White House spokesperson said.

Ramaphosa said after his call with Biden in April that the US president was “very warmly disposed” and “nostalgic” about SA and had recalled his visit to this country during the apartheid era, as a junior senator.

Senator Biden was a fierce critic of the apartheid government. In 1986, after then president Ronald Reagan said the US did not have “favourites” in the South African situation, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu dismissed Reagan’s stance as “ill-informed, stupid, contradictory and nauseating”.

Biden angrily defended Tutu against critics, saying the cleric had been “restrained”. “We do have favourites,” Biden said. “It’s the people who are being repressed by that ugly white regime … not some stupid puppet government over there.”

Read more on Daily Maverick: "Biden invites Ramaphosa to White House to talk trade and food security, buy Ukraine war likely to top agenda"

But Biden’s passion for South Africa got him into trouble in 2020 when he was campaigning for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Courting black votes in South Carolina, he claimed he’d been arrested in South Africa when he visited as the junior senator for Delaware in 1976.

The New York Times could find no evidence of an arrest and Biden said he meant to say police stopped him joining members of the US Congressional Black Caucus leaving an airport through a segregated exit.

Biden also has a close family attachment to SA. In 2019, his son Hunter married a Johannesburg woman, Melissa Cohen, and they gave Biden a grandson called Beau – named after his eldest son, who died of brain cancer in 2015. DM168

This story appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.

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