Three core American requirements for a trade and investment pact with South Africa remain as they were a year ago. United States (US) firms operating in South Africa must be exempted from black economic empowerment (BEE) rules where those rules function as a non-tariff barrier and a tax on capital. South Africa’s expropriation law must make explicit that investor assets cannot be seized for less than market value. Pretoria must also stop threatening US national security interests and restore actual non-alignment to its foreign policy.

None of these conditions should be especially difficult for South Africa to meet in theory.

The government already exempts several foreign investors from BEE requirements through what it calls equity equivalent agreements. US firms would likely be willing to go along with something similar and to make social and related investments in South Africa if those investments were framed as practical development commitments rather than racial ownership penalties.

On property rights, Pretoria says it has no intention of seizing investor assets for less than market value. The problem is that it has passed legislation that allows exactly that. It has also previously nationalised mineral rights and water rights, and is actively working toward nationalising private medical aid funds. Clear changes to policy and law will be required to reassure investors broadly.

Foreign policy is the third condition.

South Africa claims to be non-aligned, yet it regularly takes a sharply critical line against US interests in forums such as the United Nations. The hosting of Iranian warships by South Africa earlier this year particularly unsettled American officials. Pretoria will be well advised to demonstrate actual non-alignment, such as hosting an American warship as a visible gesture of balance.

Meyer has sought to assure the Americans that South Africa is interested in improving the relationship. It remains unclear whether that view is shared in Pretoria.

His own foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, has continued to make scathing statements about America and the MAGA movement, which is widely understood as a proxy for Donald Trump and his political coalition. Most recently, those comments included accusations of racism, telling Parliament in South Africa, “Everyone in South Africa agrees and understands that BEE is a critical pillar of our transformation. It is in the Constitution of the Republic, and all our transformation efforts are fully anchored on our constitutional democracy. We know that in the US, the MAGA movement is very clear to attack Black people … We know what they stand for. They stand against the human rights of women and the LGBTQI communities. It is driven by a particular ideology.”

Reports from Pretoria are that South African officials hope that Trump performs badly in the November US midterms and loses Congress, weakening him enough that South Africa can later avoid complying with Washington’s conditions. Meyer’s role in the interim, on this telling, is as a patsy to buy time, and perhaps secure limited trade relief without agreeing to anything substantive in the hope that under a Democrat-controlled Congress nothing substantive ever needs to be agreed.

The trouble with that thinking, which has the apparent support of both the foreign minister and the President, is that the reforms Washington is “demanding” are not foreign impositions. They are the same reforms South Africa’s domestic economy needs if it is to grow faster, attract capital, create jobs, and reverse the African National Congress’s electoral decline. For as long as that realisation does not land in Pretoria, leading to a reshaping of the domestic investment environment, it becomes hard to see how the requisite reforms will be extended to foreign investors broadly.