South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa travels to the United States next week to meet Donald Trump in a bid to rescue deteriorating relations with a vital and increasingly critical trade partner.

Ramaphosa will need to work his skills as a negotiator when he sits down with Trump Wednesday -- and an invitation for the US president to play South Africa's golf courses might just help build rapport, said one analyst.

This will be their first face-to-face meeting since the start of the US president's second term in January, say analysts.

The meeting will be "one of the most important South Africa-US bilateral engagements we've ever had in our history," Institute for Security Studies researcher Priyal Singh told AFP.

Ramaphosa's spokesman Vincent Magwenya said on local television Thursday that the talks would be "honest" and "robust".

But the president will also have to strike a "very conciliatory tone" and avoid a public confrontation like the clash between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, Singh said.

"If Ramaphosa plays his cards right, there could be some kind of new understanding that could work out in South Africa's favour," he added.

"But an equal possibility is that this trip may go........

© International Business Times