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When Roelf Meyer arrives in Washington to take up the post of South African ambassador, this newspaper knows that he will have the support of the Americans to do a trade deal and achieve a broader investment pact. America has desired such a deal since the day negotiations started, and the only reason South Africa still languishes among a small minority of countries yet to do a deal is that Pretoria has obstructed, evaded, and delayed one at every turn.

For a domestic policy parallel, think of the efforts of South Africa’s private sector to secure the reforms needed to raise the investment rate. Those talks and related commissions have been going on with Cyril Ramaphosa’s government for seven years, and yet the rate of fixed capital formation has not lifted, while the rate of economic growth for this year is estimated at just a quarter of that of South Africa’s emerging-market peers.

The hope of the United States (US) throughout has been that Pretoria would send a person with a plan for a trade pact and much broader investment deal in his or her pocket, and the mandate to make the decisions to lock it in. What they have received instead is a set of wholly underwhelming proposals presented by people who say they don’t have the requisite mandate to discuss the tough policy questions necessary to strike a deal.

Meyer’s success will therefore depend on two things.

First, does he arrive with a bold trade and investment pact in his pocket? One that, far beyond issues of tariffs and the African Growth and Opportunity Act, has the potential to lift South Africa’s fixed investment rate.

Second, does he have a mandate, and the support of Pretoria, to agree terms on behalf of the government on empowerment and property rights, and will Pretoria at the same time dial back its anti-Americanism?

The initial indications are not brimming with hopefulness. Just days after announcing Meyer’s appointment, President Cyril Ramaphosa helped to headline an “anti-America” forum in Spain, at which he accused Israel of genocide and America of throwing the world into turmoil, all while calling for a new global order to oppose Trump’s America. That is South Africa’s sovereign right, of course, but it sabotages Meyer out of the gate.

A wandering albatross brings more troubling news in that there is a sense in Pretoria that Meyer’s appointment will be useful in curbing the risk of sanctions against key officials and institutions in South Africa while allowing the clock to tick down on America’s midterm elections in November that Pretoria hopes will bring Democrat majorities to power in the House and the Senate, thereby neutering Trump. In that case, the thinking goes, South Africa won’t need to make any concessions to the US at all.

Looking across the aisle to the other side of South Africa’s unity government, the outlook for fixing the American relationship is just as unappealing, with the new Democratic Alliance (DA) leader describing Trump’s America as “reprehensible”, a comment on par with Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables”. Again, that view is the DA’s right, but it does leave South Africa’s investment rate somewhat in the dust.

It is therefore as if no one in the government pays heed to the national interest. That interest is clear. It is to substantively raise the investment rate, which will raise the growth rate and thereby the rate of employment. The Americans understand that. Trump’s instruction to his country’s ambassadors, and in fact the very foundation of America’s new Africa policy, has been to come back with deals – and that they will be judged on the number and value of those. But Meyer cannot secure those deals with the support of the Americans alone; he will need his own government to come to the party too.