Before commencement of the 9th Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC) in Beijing, which ran from September 4 to 6, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa preceded his FOCAC attendance by honouring the invitation of China’s President Xi Jinping to undertake a state visit to China.

During the September 2 talks, the two heads of state announced the elevation of the China-South Africa relationship to an all-round strategic co-operative partnership in the new era and several bilateral agreements set to boost and deepen trade relations, busting any scepticism about the capability of Pretoria’s Government of National Unity (GNU) to maintain a coherent foreign policy particularly towards China.

The GNU, which is the seventh administration since the advent of democracy in South Africa, is made up of nine political parties, with different ideological persuasions. The ANC, which ruled South Africa as the dominant majority party since its first administration in 1994, is a strong ally of Beijing, and has sealed strong coherent and consistent ties with China for 30 years.

However, the ANC, which lost its parliamentary majority during the 2024 elections, retained more seats than any other political party, hence it had to cobble up a GNU as the seventh administration, bringing together former opposition parties into government.

Most significantly, the GNU brought the DA, a white-dominated, pro-liberal arch-critic of the ANC whose leaders previously lambasted South Africa’s foreign relations, into government, raising fears that such a new configuration could throw South Africa’s foreign and diplomatic relations with its traditional allies into jeopardy.

Unsurprisingly, Ramaphosa’s state visit to Beijing, and the subsequent FOCAC summit, could not have come at a more critical moment for South Africa. The configuration Ramaphosa’s delegation and the sentiments he exchanged with his counterpart demonstrated that South Africa-China relations have matured, become more consistent and predictable, and that the seventh administration was not about to change its strong rapprochement with China. The engagements during the state visit, and the FOCAC summit, also demonstrated that both parties are comfortable enough to be frank about certain shortcomings that could sully their relationship.

South Africa’s domestic affairs, and preparations for the state visit, provide an instructive backdrop which demonstrates how the ANC is managing possible anti-China dissent within its GNU. The GNU emerged out of domestically challenging political circumstances for the ANC, presenting an awkward and daunting task as the left-leaning parties whose ideology resembled those of the ANC did not join the GNU.

The resultant uncertainties about the role of the new parties with contradictory ideologies and policy posture to the ANC in the GNU, such as the centre-right DA, and the IFP – regarded by many as a provincial party beholden to Zulu nationalism – triggered expected foreign policy uncertainties which needed to be addressed.

The configuration of the GNU may have quelled domestic anxieties, but it raised external concerns about how its configuration would impact on the country’s international relations and interests. To ensure consistency, the ANC seems to have done some deft and hitherto successful calculations. We will use China as a case study of how this happened.

To ensure stability in South Africa’s foreign policy, the Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco) was left under ANC stewardship. This was crucial. At least two of the GNU partners, the DA and IFP, provoked China’s ire in the past. The DA has also been critical of South Africa’s membership of the BRICS.

In 2018, the IFP invited Lobsang Sangay, president of the Central Tibetan Administration, to visit South Africa. As Sangay was using an American passport and hence did not require a visa to enter South Africa, the South African government could not easily block his entry, in the same way that the Dalai Lama had not succeeded to visit South Africa.

Sangay’s visit was met with outrage from the Chinese Embassy, which launched its strong protestations with the South African government. Allowing Sangay’s visit, the embassy complained, “undermined the political mutual trust between China and South Africa.

It runs against the common interest of SA-China relations, and will undoubtedly discourage Chinese investors’ confidence in South Africa, undermine SA’s efforts for poverty reduction, and cause grave harm for the interest of South Africa and the South African people.”

The DA, through its member Sandy Kalyan, responded with equal outrage at the Chinese Embassy, accusing it of “overstepping” on South Africa’s sovereignty. Regarding the threat that Sangay’s visit could undermine Chinese investment in South Africa, Kalyan said: “If China wants to go, it should go. The time for non-South Africans to hold the South African government to ransom is long gone.”

While Ramaphosa might not have had these specific scenarios in mind when he was engineering his Cabinet, we can safely assume that only an ANC minister at Dirco can reassure China. That might have been the calculation at the time when the Cabinet was being put together. Currently, it seems, there could not be much difference even if the portfolio was held by a non-ANC member.

The ongoing state visit has all the makings of compelling the DA to temporise on China, for two reasons; the first being, they would not want to sunder the GNU by assuming an openly hostile attitude towards China. The second reason is the inescapable reality that China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner, the second-biggest economy, and Africa’s leading and most significant trading partner

It was interesting to hear Dean Macpherson, the minister of Public Works and Enterprises, and a DA member, wax lyrical about the opportunities offered by the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to boost South Africa’s infrastructure. On his X timeline, the minister wrote that he was “honoured to join President Cyril Ramaphosa on the second day of his state visit to China”.

Some of the activities at FOCAC are serendipitous for Ramaphosa and his quest to silence the DA’s anti-Chinese sensibilities. An example is a high-level panel seminar titled “Accompanying Africa in Industrialisation, Agricultural Modernisation and Green Development to Embark on the path to Modernisation” that Ramaphosa will co-chair alongside the chairperson of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Wang Huning. This is fortuitous as it falls within the purview of John Steenhuisen, the DA leader who is the national minister of agriculture. He was seated a few yards from Ramaphosa during the meeting with Xi.

Steenhuisen, who firmly asserted his support for South Africa-China relations, praised its significant potential gains for South Africa, firmly affirming that the seventh administration supported the One China policy, in line with the traditional policies of the former ANC-led administrations. In a departure from his previous tough criticism of South Africa-China relations, the minister told Bloomberg TV in an interview that South Africa gets a lot more out of its China relationship than it is losing, while dismissing any suggestions of policy change by the GNU towards China.

He further asserted that the GNU looked forward to building strong relationships with China, increasing the basket of agricultural exports to Beijing to take advantage of the huge opportunities for the agriculture sector, fighting poverty, and growing the economy by attracting FDI to create more jobs at home. Steenhuisen also noted that multilateral platforms such as the BRICS rendered South Africa a strategic position as the entry point into the African continent.

For more than a decade, China has been South Africa’s biggest trading partner, and South Africa is China’s biggest trading partner on the African continent. However, it should be noted that South Africa runs a deficit in this trade relationship – of about $10 billion. It was thus with refreshing candour that Ramaphosa referred to the imbalance. This frankness is likely to please members of the GNU who have looked askance at South Africa’s relationship with China. If the relationship will have a chance to foster the much-needed mutual benefits, then there must be a recalibration of the trade equation.

The expansion in trade relations creates more opportunities for South Africa to raise its basket of exports to China. China puts a high premium on its relationship with South Africa and will likely attend to the concerns raised with level-headedness. South Africa, as the party running a deficit, will need to delicately navigate the trade deficit towards equilibrium, while taking advantage of expanded trade relations and opportunities.

For now, the GNU has sent its strongest indications that South Africa-China relations are in safe hands. The state visit to China denotes the ANC’s success in managing contradictions in the GNU in ways that have set a tone in international relations and foreign policy certainty with its biggest trading partner – China.

Dr Emmanuel Matambo is a Research Fellow with the Public Policy and Research Institute of Zimbabwe, and Dr Gideon Chitanga is a Post-Doctoral Research at Centre for Africa China Studies, (CACS), University of Johannesburg (UJ)

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