South Africa is Learning That Bad Friends are Very Expensive

In the winter of 1783, as the Treaty of Paris formalised the end of America's revolutionary struggle, Alexander Hamilton, then a young colonel with a mind like a rapier warned in a letter to James Madison that republics must guard against the seductions of foreign alliances, lest they become entangled in the: "caprices and intrigues" of distant powers.

Such unions, he intimated, should rest not on sentiment but on the cold calculus of mutual advantage, a principle echoed later in the Federalist Papers as a bulwark against the follies of passion in statecraft. Time was, nations heeded this admonition with the sobriety it deserved.

Which brings us to the curious case of contemporary relations between the United States and South Africa, where a Russian cargo vessel named Lady R docked surreptitiously at a naval base near Cape Town in December 2022 and exposed the perils of diplomatic drift and ideological dalliances, with a widening gap and chill in relations since then.

Governing principle

The governing principle here is as timeless as Hamilton's counsel: foreign policy endures when anchored in shared economic incentives and institutional stability, rather than the ephemeral charms of revolutionary nostalgia or redistributive zeal, a lesson South Africa's post-apartheid trajectory underscores with regrettable clarity.

Consider the electoral fortunes of the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed since 1994. In the 2014 national elections, the ANC commanded 62.15% of the vote; by 2019, that share had eroded to 57.50%; and in 2024, it plummeted to 40.18%, compelling a coalition government for the first time in post-apartheid South Africa.

This decline mirrors a broader economic malaise: South Africa's unemployment rate, hovering at 31.9% in the third quarter of 2025, afflicts nearly one-in-three workers, with youth joblessness exceeding 45% in recent surveys. Gross domestic product growth, a tepid 0.8% in the second quarter of 2025, lags far behind the 3% target set by the government, yielding a national output roughly equivalent to that of a midsize American state like Maryland.

Historical parallels abound. Post-apartheid, the United States, having expended moral capital in sanctioning the old regime, swiftly pivoted its gaze elsewhere: to the Balkans, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe's North Atlantic Treaty Organisation aspirations, leaving South Africa off the strategic radar, its GDP then a mere fraction of global heft.

Meanwhile, ANC policies, initially buoyed by post-1994 global reintegration, devolved by 2009 into a redistributive orthodoxy that stifled incentives: academic analyses, including those from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, note how bureaucratic rigidities and affirmative action mandates have deterred investment, contributing to a decade-long stagnation where per capita income has scarcely budged. Quotations from Tocqueville come to mind: "The love of equality is stronger than the love of liberty," a sentiment that has, in Pretoria's halls, prioritised equity over enterprise.

Divergence

The Lady R affair crystallises this divergence. Then American Ambassador Reuben Brigety alleged in May 2023 that the sanctioned Russian ship loaded arms destined for Moscow's Ukrainian campaign, prompting South Africa to summon him in protest and launch an inquiry that, by September, exonerated itself of any export while admitting the vessel delivered materiel for its own forces. This episode, absent regime change or catastrophe, reveals gradual realignments: South Africa's votes in multilateral forums increasingly echo those of historical patrons like Russia and China, fraying the cordial ties Washington assumed persisted.

Such misperceptions – this is, one might say, not ideal – stem from mutual neglect, with American policymakers dusting off outdated playbooks while South African leaders cling to anti-imperialist reflexes that serve neither prosperity nor stability.

Now that the blue light parades from the G20 Summit have ended, both nations might profit from rediscovering Hamilton's calculus, before their estrangement outlasts the unique shift in American foreign policy that is emerging in this second Trump administration. 

Avery Long is an experienced politico who has worked in some very interesting places.