Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Pretoria puts its hopes on an apartheid-era politician to smooth over friction with Washington, coordinated rebel attacks threaten Mali’s military junta, and exports from Africa’s largest refinery surge amid global fuel shortages.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Pretoria puts its hopes on an apartheid-era politician to smooth over friction with Washington, coordinated rebel attacks threaten Mali’s military junta, and exports from Africa’s largest refinery surge amid global fuel shortages.

Diplomatic Masterstroke?

More than a year after the White House expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Pretoria has made a controversial new appointment to fill the post: Roelf Meyer, an apartheid-era government minister who helped negotiate the end of white minority rule.

Bilateral tensions have been high since February 2025, when U.S. President Donald Trump sanctioned South Africa over false claims of a white “genocide” taking place there. The next month, Washington expelled Meyer’s predecessor, Ebrahim Rasool, for describing Trump’s political movement as “white supremacist.” White South Africans are currently the only group offered priority consideration for refugee status by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration, which has taken steps to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the United States, has also condemned Pretoria’s “Black Economic Empowerment” laws, a form of affirmative action intended to redress the legacy of apartheid.

In August, Trump hit South Africa with a 30 percent tariff (though this was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court). Meanwhile, despite pressure from Washington, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has not severed diplomatic ties with Iran or abandoned his country’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Trump’s appointment of Leo Brent Bozell III—a right-wing activist who in the 1980s opposed U.S. negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC) to end apartheid—as the U.S. ambassador to South Africa has further worsened relations.

Now, Pretoria is hoping that Meyer, an Afrikaner, will be uniquely positioned to help repair the relationship. Meyer is “someone who has got one foot in the past and one foot in the future of South Africa,” political analyst Ralph Mathekga told Foreign Policy.

Meyer was the minister of defense from 1991 to 1992 under South Africa’s white minority government and acted as its chief negotiator during talks to end........

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