How the US has eroded its moral authority in Africa

Ali Ridha Khan 

IN MARCH 2025, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. hegemony.

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

Yet fundamental policy divergences persisted — South Africa’s opposition to U.S. 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.

Rasool, a former anti-apartheid activist turned diplomat, openly criticised the rise of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement as driven by “white supremacist instincts” reacting to demographic change. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio seized on those remarks to expel Rasool, accusing him of fomenting racial division. Returning home, Rasool cast his expulsion as a “badge of dignity,” arguing that South Africa would not allow Washington to dictate “who must be our friends and enemies.” His defiance crystallized a new posture of sovereignty rooted in Black Consciousness — the belief that dignity and self-definition precede dependency on external validation.

Trump’s executive orders froze roughly $500 million in health funding and blocked a $2.6 billion climate package — aid that accounted for 17% of South Africa’s HIV budget and was critical to its transition off coal. 

Analysts warn that interruptions in antiretroviral therapy could lead to over 600,000 additional AIDS deaths in the coming decade. Likewise, withholding climate finance undermines South Africa’s ability to meet its own net-zero commitments. By wielding humanitarian aid as leverage, the United States enacted what Schmitt termed the sovereign’s right to decide the exception — suspending normal rules to punish a perceived enemy.

Schmitt argued that politics ultimately reduces to friend versus enemy and that sovereign power manifests by suspending legal norms in an “exception.” The U.S. clearly drew a binary: South Africa’s alignment with rivals (China, Russia, Iran) and its condemnation of Israel rendered it outside the circle of accepted allies. In doing so, Washington exposed the illusory neutrality of liberal institutions: aid, trade preferences (AGOA), and diplomatic norms became instruments of coercion, rather than mutual benefit.

South Africa’s stance springs from a liberation ethos articulated by Steve Biko — that true freedom demands rejecting mental dependency on former oppressors — and from Pan-African solidarity with other oppressed peoples. Ebrahim Rasool’s invocation of “Ubuntu diplomacy” framed foreign policy as moral engagement, not transactional deal-making. Ali Shariati’s call for the oppressed (the mostazafeen) to forge their own path away from imperial binaries resonates in Pretoria’s refusal to sacrifice principle for patronage.

The diplomatic rupture has catalyzed deeper South–South ties. BRICS partners like China and Russia have offered to fill investment gaps, while African Union members voiced solidarity at Rasool’s homecoming. Yet these realignments carry risks of new dependencies. The challenge for South Africa — and for any nation seeking autonomy — is to diversify partnerships without trading one form of external control for another.

Simultaneously, civil-society networks on both sides of the Atlantic are mobilizing to replace cut U.S. aid through philanthropy, municipal exchanges, and pressure on multilateral institutions. This people-to-people diplomacy undermines the Schmittian state-centric friend/enemy divide by forging solidarities that transcend government hostility.

Rasool’s expulsion underscores a transformation in the role of ambassadors: from quiet emissaries to public figures embodying contested values. For the United States, weaponising aid has eroded its moral authority in Africa, undermining the soft-power gains built over decades. For South Africa, the crisis offers an opportunity to craft a new nomos — a pluralistic order where sovereignty and solidarity guide international relations, rather than coercion.

The U.S.–South Africa crisis of 2025 is a microcosm of a shifting global order. It reveals how hegemonic powers deploy humanitarian tools to enforce compliance, while formerly colonised states reclaim agency through principled resistance. Grounded in Black Consciousness and Pan-Africanism, South Africa’s defiance challenges the friend/enemy logic that underpins imperial rule and points toward an emancipatory internationalism. Whether this rupture yields a more just multipolar world or entrenches new rivalries depends on the ability of movements and states alike to build solidarity beyond the sovereign exception.

Khan is a fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.