The FW de Klerk Foundation has publicly distanced itself from statements by its outgoing executive director, Christo van der Rheede, underlining how increasingly strained relations between South Africa and the United States (US) are beginning to reverberate within South Africa itself.

Van der Rheede voluntarily resigned from his position on 19 August and will leave the Foundation on 31 December this year. The Foundation’s board has confirmed his resignation but has also made clear that comments he made since tendering it – particularly around the state of US-South Africa relations – were not authorised and do not represent the organisation’s position.

Van der Rheede had publicly criticised recent US measures against South Africa. He described the US administration’s approach as “ethno-nationalistic” and argued that punitive measures linked to South Africa’s land and racial-redress policies risk reinforcing racial divisions. They might in fact provide South Africa’s worst elements with a shield of nationalist protection. Rather, he suggested an idea previously mooted by Joshua Meservey of the Hudson Institute, a US-based think tank, that the US administration should have gone after people named by the Zondo Commission in connection with corruption, a tactic that would have garnered extensive support across community lines.

The foundation has established a committee to oversee executive decisions during the transition and says that representations made in the foundation’s name will be subject to tighter oversight. It has also disassociated itself from statements made on its behalf from the date Van der Rheede announced his intention to resign.

It is not apparent at this point precisely what the foundation has taken issue with. The FW De Klerk Foundation has a particular focus on defending the rights of minorities within the framework of the country’s overall constitutional dispensation.

As relations between the two countries become more contentious, with little sign of improvement, a foreign policy issue is increasingly coming to occupy centre stage in domestic debate, and in stoking domestic divisions.

Van der Rheede and Hermann Pretorius of the Institute of Race Relations debated certain elements of race-based policy in South Africa on these pages a few months ago.