Diplomatic feud leads to false claims about South African banning mineral exports to the US

“South Africa has officially suspended all American businesses within South Africa also stopped the exporting of minerals to the United States of America (sic),” reads an X post published on February 16, 2025.

It adds: “This comes just a few days after Donald Trump cut off all funding from the US to South Africa and the USAID to South Afrika (sic).”

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Screenshot of the false post, taken on February 19, 2025

Shared more than 12,000 times on X, the post includes pictures of Trump and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa.

The same claim has been shared thousands of times on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and blogs, and is also circulating widely in French.

The posts emerged after South Africa’s mining minister Gwede Mantashe suggested a freeze on mineral exports to the US.

“If they don’t give us money, let’s not give them minerals,” Mantashe said on February 3, 2025, during an address at an annual summit known as the African Mining Indaba (archived here).

Mantashe made the remarks a day after Trump announced he was cutting off all future funding to South Africa because the government was “confiscating” land and “treating certain classes of people very badly” (archived here).

Trump was reacting to a bill signed by Ramaphosa in January 2025 giving South African authorities the power to expropriate property without compensation in certain circumstances (archived here).

While the tit-for-tat utterances have piled pressure on diplomatic relations between the two nations, South Africa has not placed any curbs on US companies operating on its soil, nor is it withholding mineral exports to America.

No sanctions

South Africa’s presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya said the claim was “not true at all” in a reply to the post on X on February 17, 2025 (archived here).

South Africa's trade department separately confirmed the claims were false to AFP Fact Check via WhatsApp on February 18, 2025.

The Minerals Council South Africa, an industry support body, said it was unaware of government action affecting the sector’s trade with the US.

Spokesman Allan Seccombe told AFP Fact Check the council “has no notification of any mineral export bans to any country”.

South Africa is the largest exporter under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) — a trade agreement that allows thousands of products from sub-Saharan countries to enter the US market duty-free.

In 2024, total trade between the US and South Africa was worth $20.5 billion, with South African exports ($14.7 billion) accounting for the majority (archived here).

Mining represents a large chunk of South Africa’s exports (archived here).

According to Mantashe, South Africa owns 37 percent of the world’s manganese ore reserves but only two percent is processed domestically (archived here).

The country also holds more than 90 percent of the reserves of global platinum group metals and is behind 75 percent of their supply worldwide.

Business as usual

The false posts also claimed Ramaphosa’s government had suspended the activities of about 600 US businesses operating in South Africa (archived here).

However, online searches reveal there are no credible reports to support this. 

Asked about the claim on February 18, 2025, Michelle Constant, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa said it “is not an official expression of the South African government”.

Mining giant Anglo-American, with century-long investments in South Africa, also told AFP Fact Check it is “not aware of the claims”. 

However, the company added it is “concerned about the level of misinformation around the Expropriation Act” and “closely monitoring the evolving diplomatic relations between South Africa and the United States of America”.

Bilateral relations

The land bill, known as the Expropriation Act, drew criticism from South Africa-born Elon Musk, a powerful Trump adviser (archived here).

The legislation replaces a 1975 apartheid-era law and is intended to align with the country’s democratic constitution (archived here).

On February 3, 2025, South African officials clarified that no land had been expropriated under the new law, despite Trump’s claims of “confiscations” (archived here).

But the spat intensified further after Trump offered to accept white Afrikaners as refugees, which caught many off guard, including right-wing lobby groups (archived here).

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White South Africans supporting US President Donald Trump in front of the US Embassy in Pretoria, on February 15, 2025 (AFP / MARCO LONGARI)

Further fallout saw US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pull out of a G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Johannesburg from February 22-23 (archived here).

AFP Fact Check has debunked other disinformation about US and South African politics here.