How the US has eroded its moral authority in Africa

The US—South Africa crisis of 2025 is a microcosm of a shifting global order

- ALI RIDHA KHAN

IN MARCH, South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was declared persona non grata by the Trump administration - a dramatic rupture that coincided with an abrupt suspension of US aid, including life-saving HIV funding (PEPFAR) and climate-transition finance.

Far from an isolated spat, these measures expose a broader contest over sovereignty, moral authority, and the spatial ordering of power between a rising Global South and a waning US hegemony.

Since apartheid’s end, Pretoria and Washington maintained a cautious partnership: US aid programmes like PEPFAR saved millions of lives, even as US governments once labelled the ANC “terrorists”.

Yet fundamental policy divergences persisted - South Africa's opposition to US wars, its condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza, and its leadership in BRICS challenged the assumption that African states must align with Western interests.

By 2024, South Africa's referral of Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for alleged genocide became the final straw. President Trump's administration framed this stance - along with land redistribution laws - as hostile to American “friends’, invoking a friend/enemy logic first theorised by Carl Schmitt.