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Last week the United States (US) announced that it may pursue visa restrictions on individual South Africans responsible for racially discriminatory legislation and threats of expropriation. The American government has long maintained that racially discriminatory empowerment policies act as a non-tariff barrier and that American investments are at risk of being expropriated for less than their market value. Pretoria has answered that it will not have its sovereignty impinged, and the foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, has said it will not bend to Washington’s concerns. But the minister is out of touch with what South Africans themselves want for American investors.

Polling by The Common Sense and the Social Research Foundation has asked South African voters whether they support exempting American firms from black economic empowerment (BEE) and protecting their assets from expropriation.

The chart below shows responses from all voters, black voters, white voters, and from African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA) voters on whether American firms should be exempted from BEE.

The data are pretty emphatic that, by a margin of roughly two to one, South Africans support what the American government is requesting from Pretoria.

The chart below shows responses to the question of whether American investments should be protected from expropriation.

The splits are again similar, with majorities of South African respondents across all four categories saying they support securing American investment against the threat of expropriation.

The data in favour of the US requests expose something that people who do not understand the country still struggle to understand, which is that the government’s policies are increasingly at odds with the ideas of the country’s people. It is particularly striking to find that this holds true on questions around the US, given the shrill anti-American messaging in most of the country’s media, from its government, and from most political parties.

Warwick Grey told The Common Sense, “There’s a reason that the ANC no longer has a majority, because people are not aligned with its ideas, because these do not deliver on the better life for all, which the party promised its supporters in 1994. It really is very simple to understand what is going on: South Africans are centrist pragmatists, they want jobs and improved lives and they don’t care where that comes from… but this is something that the country’s elites find almost impossible to understand.”