The US says it remains open to engagement with South Africa where the two countries’ interests align.
The statement, issued on Monday by secretary of state Marco Rubio, coincided with the 32nd anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections and marked the first formal public outreach from Washington to Pretoria in months, as diplomatic tensions simmer between the two countries.
President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen most US aid to South Africa, expelled its ambassador last year and excluded the country from December’s G20 summit in Miami. It also barred its finance minister and central bank governor from attending a G20 finance meeting in Washington this month.
“On behalf of the US, I extend warm greetings to the people of South Africa as you commemorate Freedom Day,” Rubio said in the statement issued by the state department.
“More than three decades since South Africa’s democratic transition, this occasion provides an opportunity to reflect on the country’s history and future. As we look ahead, we remain open to constructive engagement where our interests align.”
South Africa has taken steps to ease tensions, with President Cyril Ramaphosa appointing Roelf Meyer, a 78-year-old Afrikaner who was the apartheid government’s chief constitutional negotiator in the 1990s, as ambassador to Washington.
The post had been vacant since March 2025, when the US expelled Ebrahim Rasool after he described the pro-Trump Make America Great Again (Maga) movement as driven by a “white supremacist instinct”.
Pretoria also submitted a revised trade and investment proposal to the US in May 2025.
Rubio’s statement comes ahead of the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Washington from May 3 to 6. The summit is the US government’s flagship event for attracting foreign investment, and South Africa’s participation is being pitched as a chance to unlock high-value commercial opportunities and strengthen economic ties.
South African companies hold $5.4bn (about R90bn) in foreign direct investment stock in the US in industries including software, financial services and automotive components.
The two countries remain publicly at odds over South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and its land reform legislation, which Pretoria argues aims to redress the ownership imbalances created by apartheid. The Trump administration has repeatedly falsely claimed white Afrikaners face persecution in South Africa, an assertion Pretoria rejects.
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