Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that South Africa opposes the United States on “issue after issue after issue” in foreign policy.
Rubio was testifying in defense of his department’s budget, and responded to a question from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about the visit of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Cruz prefaced his question by noting South Africa’s “explicit and extensive pivot away from the United States and toward the Chinese Communist Party.” He also cited “serious and credible allegations that the South African government’s decision-making is compromised by widespread corruption tied to Iran. They are working together to target our Israeli allies on the international stage.”
Cruz added that Ramaphosa had pushed policies that would “expose American officials to vulnerabilities” in the International Criminal Court.
South African President Ramaphosa is in Washington, DC, seeking a reset after President Trump repeatedly and rightly criticized South Africa for human rights violations and activities that undermine our national security. Ramaphosa is pivoting toward China and taking an… pic.twitter.com/fE2j0p4hSY
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) May 20, 2025
Rubio responded that South Africa had been a consistent vote against America on the global stage. While he understood that countries would have differences with the U.S. on some issues, “when one country is consistently unaligned with the United States on issue after issue after issue after issue, now you have to make conclusions about it.”
While President Trump had agreed to the meeting, after a rocky few months in U.S.-South Africa relations, Rubio said, because Ramaphosa had expressed interest in a “reset,” the administration was still skeptical.
“If there’s a willingness on their side to reset relations, obviously that’s something we’ll explore, but we do so with eyes wide open to what they’ve done so far.”
Asked to explain further how South Africa’s position on Israel undermined the U.S., Rubio noted that South Africa was lining up with America’s enemies to oppose Israel.
He added that South Africa was pushing global institutions that, “if they could, jail, imprison, indict American officeholders because some of the positions we’ve taken on public policy, even though we’re not members of the conventions that create these entities,” referring to the International Criminal Court.
Earlier this year, Ramaphosa penned an op-ed specifically criticizing Trump for applying sanctions to the International Criminal Court, which he did in his first term because the court started targeting American soldiers for prosecution. President Joe Biden lifted those sanctions; President Trump restored them this year.
Ramaphosa told reporters earlier Tuesday that he wants “a really good trade deal” with Trump, but as Breitbart News has noted, South Africa is not offering compromises on any issue Trump has flagged.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
