President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of veteran negotiator Roelf Meyer as South Africa’s next ambassador to the US landed with considerable force on Tuesday.
The optics are compelling: the man who helped broker the end of apartheid alongside Ramaphosa, the Afrikaner statesman with democratic credibility, dispatched to Washington to repair a relationship that has been in varying states of dysfunction for more than a year.
But as much as it is a tidy narrative, it is running ahead of the facts. Meyer himself told reporters he had no knowledge of the appointment before being contacted. And those who leaked the information admitted that it was not yet public. This story was not supposed to break yet, so the road from presidential preference to functioning ambassador in Washington will be a long political journey.
It is worth remembering that Thabo Thage, a career diplomat with postings in Bulgaria and Chile behind him, was appointed just last month as minister plenipotentiary at South Africa’s Washington embassy. He is set to depart for the post only in May. His designation grants him full authority to negotiate and sign treaties on behalf of the South African government.
Thage will serve as deputy head of mission and, in the continued absence of a permanent ambassador, will function as chargé d’affaires; in effect, head of the embassy. Unlike a full ambassadorial post, he does not require agrément (a host government accepting the nomination of a foreign ambassador to the host country) from Washington. After the Mcebisi Jonas visa debacle, that distinction matters.
Thage’s appointment reflects Pretoria’s considered approach to a relationship where every visible move gets weaponised. He is described by colleagues as a seasoned, effective operator who already has a working relationship with the US embassy.
That context reframes the Meyer story considerably by showing that the South African government is not scrambling to fill a gap. It has a credible, capable figure heading to Washington next month. The permanent ambassador question, while important, is not the operational crisis it was 12 months ago.
Which brings us back to the leak and what it means for Meyer’s actual prospects. His name, along with those of Marthinus van Schalkwyk, Andries Nel and Gerhardus Koornhof, were mentioned in a leaked shortlist back in April last year. It is thus safe to say that Meyer is playing the only card available to him: distance, until the process is complete.
Then there is also the agrément process itself under a White House that has been less than friendly to South Africa. Washington must formally approve any South African ambassador before they can present credentials.
Under normal bilateral conditions, this is administrative. But under the Trump administration, using the South Africa-US relationship as a recurring prop in its domestic political theatre, it is anything but. US ambassador to South Africa Leo Brent Bozell’s meeting with Meyer in March and his notably warm social media post about it suggest Washington may not be hostile to the prospect.
It is worth noting that Meyer’s identity cuts both ways. He is a white Afrikaner, the group that has been used as justification by the Trump administration to suspend aid or assistance to South Africa and promote a resettlement programme for Afrikaner refugees “escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation”. That same identity is precisely why Washington may be receptive to his nomination, while domestic critics will scrutinise the appointment.
Meyer is 78 and will therefore not be a long-term diplomatic appointment. He is a strategic deployment chosen for what he represents at a specific moment in a specific relationship. The formal Meyer process, agrément included, runs in parallel with Thage’s appointment. Finalisation in the third quarter of the year, at the earliest, is the realistic scenario.
Under this US administration presenting credentials is a political moment, just as it was when Bozell presented his to Ramaphosa. Meyer’s agrément is only complete when he stands in the Oval Office, and that photograph alongside Trump is still some distance away.
• Davhie is research associate at the Centre for Risk Analysis, focusing on political risk and foreign policy.
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