The ANC Keeps Slamming the Door on a Deal With the United States

Last week, the African National Congress (ANC) launched perhaps its most aggressive political attack on the United States (US) to date, accusing Washington of “aggression”, “kidnapping”, “imperialism”, and “economic coercion” following its arrest of Venezuelan dictator and drug merchant Nicolás Maduro.

In rallying to Maduro’s defence, the ANC effectively casts the US as a rogue power acting outside international law, trampling sovereignty, destabilising the world, and bullying developing nations for resources and market control. It tells South Africans, in plain terms, that Washington is not a partner to be negotiated with, but an adversary to be resisted. When it says, “fragmented or hesitant responses cannot defeat imperialism”, it is not talking about abstract theory. It is urging a united front against the US and its allies.

This is ideology, not diplomacy.

It is also an extraordinary act of self-harm. South Africa needs growth, investment, and market access. The US is a major source of all three. Yet the ANC keeps choosing revolutionary posture over national interest, publicly humiliating the very country whose capital and market access South Africa most needs.

No serious US administration will pursue deeper trade or investment co-operation with a party or government that speaks about it in these terms. You cannot call a country an aggressor, accuse it of kidnapping foreign leaders, and demand that the world “defeat” its influence, and then expect a warm handshake across the trade table.

The ANC may think this plays well in certain activist circles but the cost will be borne by South Africans in the only places that matter, jobs, investment, and growth.

This statement does not wound Washington. It wounds South Africa.