The Free Market Foundation (FMF), an influential South African think-tank with a bold record in the fight against apartheid, is in the United States (US) this month to brief American officials and policymakers on conditions inside South Africa and promote what needs to be done to rebuild sound trade and investment relations.

FMF chief executive officer David Ansara and head of policy Dr Martin van Staden are meeting federal officials, think tanks, lobbyists, and policy influencers in Washington DC and New York City during September and October 2026.

Ansara and Van Staden will also speak at the White Cross Project Conference at the National Press Club in Washington on 25 September.

The visit comes at a particularly difficult moment in relations between Pretoria and Washington.

On 15 September, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new visa restriction policy targeting South African nationals deemed responsible for, or complicit in, policies involving expropriation and race-based discrimination. Both policies have severely damaged South Africa’s economy and the living standards of its people and the Foundation argues that they are in addition inconsistent with the text and values of South Africa’s own Constitution.

The FMF has therefore welcomed the targeted nature of the latest American response. In February 2025, the organisation also welcomed American action directed at what the White House described at the time as the “egregious actions” of the South African government.

Yet the FMF draws an important distinction between the South African government, with its ruinous policies, on the one hand, and views and experiences of South Africans themselves, most of whom remain favourably disposed towards the US. According to the FMF it is critical that American action is focused on the institutions, policies, and individuals that have damaged the South African economy and result in harm to the living standards of ordinary South Africans.

The South African government has long denied that its policies are ruinous or that they threaten US interests, but the data on investment, growth, and employment tell another story, while South African policymakers use those same policies as non-tariff barriers to keep American firms at bay.

“In the absence of a responsible stance toward the US by the South African government, it falls to civil society to explain what is actually happening in South Africa,” Ansara said.

“We are going to Washington to inform and to propose constructive solutions, not to ask for charity. Our American counterparts should hear a South African account that welcomes justified pressure, insists that it be targeted, and refuses to treat the government and the people of South Africa as one and the same.”

The Don Caldwell Memorandum

Central to the FMF’s visit is a briefing document that Ansara and Van Staden will present during their American engagements.

The memorandum is named in honour of Donald Caldwell, an American journalist and author who worked with the FMF during South Africa’s transition out of apartheid in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Caldwell died in a car accident in 1992.

Its purpose is to provide American policymakers and institutions with the organisation’s assessment of the political and economic conditions driving the deterioration in relations, while proposing that Washington direct its response towards the policies and officials it holds responsible, rather than South Africa as a whole.

“Americans who still have commercial, strategic, and personal ties to South Africa are entitled to an honest account not sanitised through Pretoria’s euphemisms and filters,” Van Staden said.

“That is what this visit is about. The Don Caldwell Memorandum we will be sharing during our engagements is a description of domestic fact and a request for constructive engagement, so that pressure from Washington is aimed at the policies and officials responsible for South Africa’s decline.”