Naval exercises held off the coast of South Africa have led to a new round of hostility between the country and the United States.
The exercises, held this month, were led by China and joined by members of the BRICS group of emerging economies, including South Africa, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates. Two of the group’s original members, Brazil and India, did not participate.
As the weeklong exercises approached on Jan. 9, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa ordered his defense officials to ensure that Iran, which was scheduled to participate, was downgraded to observer status, according to his office.
But Tehran participated in the drills anyway, including in live-fire exercises that took place at the height of the mass demonstrations in Iran this month, during which thousands of protesters were killed.
Now, what allies of Mr. Ramaphosa had thought was an attempt to avoid agitating President Trump has become another setback in his country’s strained relationship with Washington.
After the exercises, the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria strongly rebuked the South African government, accusing it of “choosing to stand with a regime that brutally represses its people and engages in terrorism.”
The South African government has said that China organized the drills and handled the invitations, and that South Africa simply hosted them in its waters. The Chinese government did not respond to requests for comment.
That explanation has done little to quell the uproar.
The drills were the second time in six months that Mr. Ramaphosa appeared to be blindsided by his own military on Iran. Last August, the South African military’s top general visited Tehran, where he spoke glowingly of the relationship between the two countries. Mr. Ramaphosa did not know about or approve the visit, his office said.
As a middle power and Africa’s largest economy, South Africa has long struggled to balance its relationship with various international partners. South African officials view the country’s BRICS membership as a crucial step to fulfilling its geopolitical ambitions of greater economic independence.
In recent years, the BRICS bloc has more bluntly positioned itself as a bulwark against U.S. hegemony. The naval drills were not an official BRICS exercise, but they ended up showcasing divisions in the alliance.
The Indian government released a statement this month downplaying its absence, saying that the exercises were “entirely a South African initiative in which some BRICS members took part.”
Brazil, which has tried to position itself as a leading voice on diplomacy in the global south, sent a naval officer to observe. The Brazilian Navy said in a statement that it did not participate because it could not deploy ships to the region in time.
Military drills are about much more than improving the technical capabilities of a country’s armed forces, said Priyal Singh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank in South Africa. “A joint naval exercise is all about the optics as well,” Mr. Singh said. “It’s about sending a geopolitical message.”
The South African government has vowed to investigate Iran’s participation and the fact that a presidential order was seemingly ignored. That process is off to a rocky start. Nearly two weeks after the defense minister said the inquiry would take place, it has yet to begin.
While Mr. Ramaphosa’s political opponents have accused him of weak leadership and called on him to swiftly discipline the officials who allowed Iran to participate, he is also facing scrutiny from within his own party. Those critics accuse him of letting America’s unpredictable, strongman president influence his foreign policy decisions.
Some South Africans have grown tired of Mr. Trump’s repeated attacks on their country, including his false claims that Afrikaners are facing a genocide. Some rank-and-file members of Mr. Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress, have asked why leaders continue to engage with Washington, said Lindiwe Zulu, a member of the party’s national executive committee.
“We feel you are kowtowing toward this man,” some members have said, according to Ms. Zulu.
She added that many were dismayed by what they saw as Mr. Trump’s edicts “about whom we must keep relations with, how we must conduct our international relations, how we conduct even our internal relations.”
Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for Mr. Ramaphosa, said the South African leader had sought to cancel Iran’s participation in the naval drills to protect his country’s “own national interest.”
“That does not translate to us selling our sovereignty,” he said, but it was rather a matter of “care and pragmatism.”
The consequences South Africa may face from the United States, its second-largest trading partner, are unclear. A bill to renew a preferential trade program for dozens of African nations was recently passed by the House and awaits action in the Senate.
Some South Africans fear that the Trump administration might exclude their country from the program.
