The continuing breakdown in relations between South Africa and the United States (US) is no passing squall. When the US imposed sweeping 30% tariffs on South African exports, it marked the culmination of months of growing unease in Washington about Pretoria’s willingness to meet basic expectations of partnership. For many, it confirmed the sense that South Africa’s approach to trade, investment, and diplomacy is increasingly inept.

At the crux of the problem is Pretoria’s inability to practise effective geostrategic diplomacy; the government has shown neither the finesse nor the foresight to navigate great-power rivalries in a way that advances the national interest. This is all the more striking given that the African National Congress (ANC), which still firmly controls South Africa’s foreign policy, once excelled at this kind of diplomacy and successfully balanced global interests and forging partnerships in an often-hostile world. That skill, hard-won and long valued, appears to have been lost just when it is needed most.

The world’s largest economy wants assurance that South Africa is a dependable home for capital and technology. What it has received instead are signals of ambivalence: policy hurdles that deter investors, persistent uncertainty over property rights, and a foreign policy that too often collides with American interests.

This lack of credibility comes at a time when South Africa’s unemployment rate hovers around 30%, a stark contrast to the United States where joblessness remains below 5%. The power imbalance, that Pretoria refuses to concede, is that South Africa needs access to American markets, capital, and expertise far more urgently than the United States needs South Africa as a trading partner. In so lopsided an economic relationship, the country with fewer jobs and slower growth cannot afford to alienate the one holding the cards.

Yet this is exactly what South Africa is doing.

Official overtures have been halting and defensive, with cabinet ministers blaming outside actors while South Africa’s officials affront their American counterparts. Efforts by business leaders and civil society to bridge the gap have been denounced as unpatriotic, when in truth they are trying to keep the door to growth open. This impulse to scapegoat those who seek solutions sends a dangerous message – one that stifles initiative and chills the appetite for partnership. More troubling still, the government does not appear to care about the consequences for ordinary South Africans and most especially in terms of lost jobs and diminished prospects.

Underlying all of this is a contest between two visions.

One sees a future shaped by open markets, clear rules, and practical co-operation. The other clings to the illusion that sovereignty means insulating the state from outside scrutiny and resisting engagement. Yet a stagnant economy with chronically high unemployment has little sovereignty to defend; real independence is built on the foundation of investment, skills, and opportunity.

South Africa may imagine it is playing the West off against the East, but in reality it is securing very little for itself in terms of hard benefits, leaving the country isolated while investment and opportunities go elsewhere. South Africa’s diplomats and Presidency seem stuck in a 1950s Cold War mindset that treats global affairs as a zero-sum contest between rival blocs, when in fact the current multipolar reality is far more nuanced and demands the kind of diplomatic dexterity that Pretoria has so far failed to show.

The pity is that Pretoria possesses real geostrategic advantages that many other emerging economies can only envy. South Africa sits astride the vital shipping lanes of both the Indo-Pacific and South Atlantic, commanding access to some of the busiest maritime corridors on the planet. With strategic ports, advanced infrastructure, and the ability to serve as a natural gateway for trade and investment into the wider continent, the country has the potential to turn location into leverage.

But instead of converting these advantages into concrete economic gains – by anchoring new investment, building out regional logistics, and fostering partnerships with multiple blocs Pretoria’s lack of vision and diplomatic agility means these strengths remain chiefly underexploited.

This blunt, transactional approach from Pretoria stands in sharp contrast to the more sophisticated tactics of other global players. When President Vladimir Putin recently visited Alaska, he combined symbolism with subtlety, using presence and narrative to extend influence without open confrontation. President Xi Jinping, too, has built Beijing’s leverage not through grandstanding but by weaving partnerships, offering incentives, and positioning China as an indispensable node in regional and global networks.

No trade negotiation, however technical, can succeed in the absence of trust. If Pretoria continues to treat diplomacy as theatre and a stage for silly ideological point-scoring and one-upmanship, rather than a terrain to secure hard economic and strategic gains, it will find itself increasingly isolated, and forced to explain domestic stagnation and decline as the consequence of external hostility to an increasingly sceptical public and investment community.

Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) was an American naval officer and historian whose ideas reshaped global strategy. In his landmark 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, he argued that nations rise or fall based on their control of the seas. His work inspired major naval expansions in the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan, and established the principle that maritime power, strong fleets, trade routes, and overseas bases, is essential to national strength and global influence.