The minimum you must know

South Africa overcame a long history of apartheid in 1994, when black South Africans voted in an election for the first time. Nelson Mandela was released to become president of the country. South Africa became a global symbol of freedom, and is diplomatically outspoken regarding apartheid as a result.

Very Distinguished South African President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa used his annual address to at the United Nations to eloquently pattern "peace," call for global peaceful diplomacy and to very much align South African and United States foreign policies for the African continent and well beyond. There are only reasons for an excellent and improving relations between the countries, which seems very likely to this author.

South Africa used to call for an end to the Israeli "apartheid" towards the Palestinian people. South Africa brought an argument about Israel before the International Criminal Court, and called for end to the conflict. The pursuit of justice by the South African government reflected great courage and integrity. South Africa has a phenomenal government for wanting to protect the Palestinian people.

Ordinarily all sides exonerate each other at the conclusion of major peace agreements. And there was a much publicized and very successful peace agreement reached in October 2025 in Egypt, where President Trump met with more than a dozen highly regarded presidents and foreign ministers from interested countries. All of the attendees signed a peace accord (“ending 3,000 years of hostilities”), which may finally bring reconstruction to Gaza, and a brand new city gifted to the Palestinian people. It’s a huge project potentially involving new homes for well over a million people. Everyone wants the Palestinians to receive food. Meanwhile President Trump historically lifted sanctions on bordering Syria and Iraq, which opened an important gateway for already over a million former refugees to return to the area (each year).

This was an exciting and welcome development for overwhelmed NATO states such as Turkey, Spain, France and Portugal. There’s clearly eagerness from all sides for Gaza reconstruction to become more than just successful. A lot of governments on all sides want Gaza to become a symbol of peace and optimism for the entire region.

This writer believes that President Donald Trump’s sensitively written peace accords for interfaith peace during his first term were very sincere, and that the current effort to give away a brand new city to the Palestinian people reflects tremendous integrity.

Perhaps South Africa would sign an Abraham’s Accord at the White House for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis? (More below.) That would be a wonderful and amazing development in U.S., Palestinian, Israeli and South African relations.

There were a few recent tensions between the South African government and the Trump administration. In December 2025, South African authorities arrested Kenyan nationals working on a U.S.-linked refugee processing effort for Afrikaners, and two U.S. officials were briefly detained (not arrested), according to reporting. South Africa also reportedly hosted a summit during the G20, which the United States did not attend. President Trump later said South Africa would not be invited to the one in the United States in 2026.

South Africa is highly multilingual. English is widely used, and roughly one in ten citizens speaks Afrikaans as a home language. This is important because in Afrikaans, the definite article “the” is written “die,” the way it is written and spoken much more broadly in Germany and Austria (and as that/those in The Netherlands). While entirely unintentional, that patterning in a small and diminishing percentage of society can incite English-speakers, which includes essentially everyone there.

The region was colonized by Germany and the Netherlands. The Netherlands established a permanent settlement at the Cape in 1652. Germany followed the Netherlands there, establishing bordering Namibia as a colony in 1884. The Afrikaans language started developing then from colonial-era Dutch and German, shaped by sustained interaction among European settlers and local enslaved and indigenous communities.

Germany carried out a Herero and Nama genocide in bordering Namibia from 1904 to 1908, in which tens of thousands of peaceful people lost their lives under brutal policies that included the early use of concentration camps. German rule ended in 1915 when South African forces defeated the German army in World War I.

South Africa administered Namibia until its independence in 1990. But apartheid-era governance continued in both Namibia and South Africa throughout the 1900s, only ending through prolonged struggle, international pressure, and negotiated democratic processes—Namibia achieving independence in 1990 and South Africa completing its democratic modernization in 1994.

South Africa is comparably calm today. It has experienced episodic internal unrest, including riots in 2021, but remains oriented toward internal stability and peace at the state level. Several neighboring countries—where Afrikaans is not widely spoken by local populations—have faced more serious challenges to peace, including conflict in the Congo and the Islamist insurgency in northern Mozambique, where South African forces are deployed, as well as political confrontations in Zimbabwe, Eswatini, and Lesotho. These events have been localized and followed by renewed efforts to restore stability. Taken together, South Africa’s recent history reflects a pattern of seeking peace, preserving peace, and returning to peace rather than descending into sustained regional conflict.

The former apartheid state associated themselves with Afrikaans. Extraordinary Nelson Mandela wisely treated it as a language, not as an ideology, and became fluent before gaining his freedom, especially on Robben Island, where he used it strategically and respectfully—to understand his competitors, read newspapers and formal texts, and eventually communicate directly with leaders.

This writer believes South Africa started placing substantial importance on peace and constructive diplomacy following the end of apartheid. There is a comparably very ethical government today.

Given the region’s historical experience with German incitement in camps, South Africa may by surprisingly sympathetic to Jewish experiences during the holocaust, and open to participating in the Abraham Accords for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. This writer highly recommends renewed top-level diplomatic engagement by the Trump administration—including a White House invitation and full participation in G20 activities—to reinforce a cooperative trajectory.

Because South Africa has resources deployed to Congo (according to years of media reporting), the White House’s remarkable and complete success creating a phenomenal Congo-Rwanda peace agreement could only have occurred with South Africa’s support.

South Africa is predominantly at peace globally.