Cyril Ramaphosa: the cool Mandela-era head Trump tried to ambush

In 2000, the US and sub-Saharan African countries signed the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade agreement allowing eligible African nations to export certain products to the US duty-free. 

It gives South Africa duty-free access to the US market for certain goods and is credited with having boosted South Africa's fragile economy, but it expires this year, and Trump's isolationist worldview suggests that his will not renew it, making a bilateral trade deal all the more urgent.

Yet while Ramaphosa was keen to talk about trade, Trump seemed more interested in claims that white South Africans were being persecuted. Ramaphosa's conduct during Trump's "ambush" has done him no harm whatsoever and has even reminded South Africans of their president's diplomatic pedigree—and, perhaps, of his importance to the country's rules-based order. 

Steering the country

As a recent report on Ramaphosa broadcast on the BBC's World Service recently concluded that "he is, along with Nelson Mandela, South Africa's greatest ever alliance builder and facilitator," adding that "he was at the nerve centre of negotiating an end to the racist system of apartheid in the early 1990s, and in keeping South Africa together when many had prophesied its fatal fracture".

It further noted that Ramaphosa had "steered the country out of the bleak 'state capture' years of the Jacob Zuma administration and then through Covid,". After the ANC's disastrous showing in last year's elections, Ramaphosa led it into coalition politics, meaning it lived to fight another day. So, who is this man who has played a big role in both South Africa and its biggest political party?

Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa was born 17 November 1952 on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa's capital, and has risen from a poor and challenging childhood to become South Africa's fifth president since the end of the apartheid era.

The young Ramaphosa experienced the racial injustices of the apartheid era during his childhood and teenage years. His family were forcibly moved to the township of Soweto when he was just a young child, just some of the millions of black South Africans to be relocated to distant, often economically deprived areas.

Early activism

According to his biographer Anthony Butler, at school a "popular and confident" Ramaphosa would "take his schoolteachers to task if he didn't think they were working hard enough". He got involved in the black consciousness movement at university, so was targeted by South Africa's ruthless security establishment. In 1974, his activism led to an 11-month stint in solitary confinement. After another period of detention, he decided to study law, getting a degree in 1981.

He was a thorn in the side of white mine bosses in the 1980s, leading the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in one of the largest strikes in South Africa's history, and joined the ANC, where he worked closely with Nelson Mandela to negotiate an end to minority rule, which eventually came in 1994. Rising through the ranks, he became the movement's secretary general, from where he could play a big role in the negotiations that ultimately led to the end of apartheid.

After, he was elected to head the Constitutional Assembly following South Africa's first fully democratic elections in 1994 and helped draft the country's post-apartheid constitution, one of the most liberal in the world. Many thought of him as the likely successor to Mandela, who had become South Africa's first black president.

The presidency

It was not to be. He was overlooked for the more senior Thabo Mbeki. Dispirited, Ramaphosa became an MP, but later withdrew from politics to enter the business world, where he found success, including as an owner of the McDonald's franchise in South Africa.

He was appointed to the boards of several prominent companies and eventually returned to politics in December 2012 at the ANC's 53rd National Conference, serving as deputy president under President Jacob Zuma from 2014-18. After serving as chairman of the National Planning Commission, Ramaphosa was finally elected president of the ANC in 2017, replacing Zuma as president the following year. 

He began his first full term as president in May 2019 following the ANC's victory in the 2019 general election, chaired the African Union from 2020-21, and led South Africa's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Governing in coalition

More broadly, he has embodied South Africa's more assertive role in world affairs, not least in leading international efforts to bring war crimes charges against Israeli leaders for their country's conduct in Gaza, although he chose not to condemn Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

At home, domestic difficulties meant that he struggled to win a second term as president in last year's general election, when he led the ANC to its worst election result in 30 years, falling short of the 50% needed to govern alone. Today, he only survives as party leader and national president thanks to a power-sharing deal with the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) and two smaller parties.

With South Africa still blighted by stubbornly high unemployment, huge economic inequalities, widespread power cuts and corruption allegations, Ramaphosa needs global allies to help his country overcome its current difficulties. After the encounter with Trump at the White House, the US may not be one of them.