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- President Cyril Ramaphosa's office has confirmed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will arrive in South Africa in April.
- Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the visit would, hopefully, lead to peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
- Magwenya said Ramaphosa was not surprised by US President Donald Trump's latest executive order.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Pretoria in April.
Presidency spokesperson Vincent Mangwenya confirmed this on Friday during Ramaphosa's oversight visit to the City of Johannesburg.
Magwenya said: "It's true that President Zelensky will visit South Africa on the 10th of April. The visit is a culmination of the many engagements that President Ramaphosa has held with both President Zelensky and President (Vladimir) Putin in trying to get the two parties on the road to peace, which we've always believed and still believe...is through dialogue."
The confirmation comes after a Mail & Guardian report confirmed the dates of the visit.
Last month, News24 reported that Ramaphosa had confirmed that he had invited Zelensky to visit Pretoria this year.
Ramaphosa took to X (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday morning to confirm that he had a conversation with Zelensky on various geopolitical matters.
"I welcome the constructive engagement I had with President @ZelenskyyUA, and I look forward to hosting him in South Africa soon for a state visit," he said.
"We both agreed on the urgent need for an inclusive peace process that involves all parties in finding a resolution to the conflict and securing a lasting peace. South Africa remains committed to supporting the dialogue process between Russia and Ukraine."
The confirmation comes after Zelensky also posted on X to confirm the talks.
Zelensky posted: "I spoke with South African President @CyrilRamaphosa and thanked him for South Africa's support of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is important that our countries share the same position: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. We all hope to achieve a just and lasting peace this year. South Africa's voice matters, and we count on its support."
This is not the first time the two leaders have spoken on the phone. In fact, they talk regularly after South Africa took a non-aligned stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
News24 reported in December that Zelensky said he was more than prepared for a state visit to South Africa during a meeting with African journalists at the International Food Summit in Ukraine.
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Magwenya said the visit aims to achieve two things.
"One, is to sort of accelerate the process leading to peace talks, look at removing whatever barriers there are to the commencement of those peace talks, and do this in concert with other parties that have been supportive, with respect to ensuring a dialogue between the two countries and the two heads of state."
Secondly, Magwenya said South Africa should begin to explore areas where it can strengthen bilateral ties with Ukraine because it needs to look beyond the conflict.
At some point, this conflict will end, and we have economic interests, Ukraine has economic interests and, where possible, [we need to] begin to explore how we can align those interests.
Asked what Ramaphosa made of the exchange between US President Donald Trump and Zelensky in the White House in Washington last Friday, Magwenya said he would not like to get into the matter, but it's safe to say that substantively, "President Trump has said he wants to see the end of this war."
He was referring to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which started in February 2022.
In June 2023, a team of African presidents, led by Ramaphosa, undertook the African Peace Initiative Mission to Ukraine and Russia to find a peaceful resolution to the war.
"President Trump has said he supports a negotiated settlement between the two parties. So substantively, we are aligned with President Trump in that regard, and it's a position, as South Africa, we've maintained from the beginning, from the onset of this conflict, that this is a conflict you're not going to win militarily."
Magwenya added that the conflict required all parties with vested interests in a peaceful outcome to sit down around a table and find a peaceful resolution.
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"And so, substantively, at least there's some alignment between us and the Americans in that regard, and that's what we would rather focus on," he said.
when asked about Trump's latest executive order, Magwenya said there was a general mistake being made in thinking that the act targeted South Africa.
This week, News24 reported that the US withdrawal from the crucial JETP (Just Energy Transition Partnership) climate finance pact with South Africa was "regrettable" but does not spell the end of the plan, a UK official told News24.
On Thursday morning, the Just Transition Project Management Unit (PMU) in the Presidency issued a statement confirming the decision – which was made known to the South African government as early as 28 February 2025. The withdrawal is part of US executive orders issued by Trump.
The climate pact of which the US was part is supposed to support South Africa's transition to a low-carbon economy. The US had planned to contribute about $1 billion in commercial loans and $56 million in grant funds to the deal.
Magwenya said: "The mistake that we should not make is to translate that action as a South Africa-targeted action only. President Trump indicated early on that the US will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
He indicated that the US would withdraw from some of these climate change-related commitments. So, we understood that decision in that context, that there was an earlier indication that the US would withdraw from these commitments, including financial commitments and pledges that the US would have made to the climate change course. So we are not entirely taken by surprise that was the case.
In any case, said Magwenya, the portion of funding being withdrawn would have been loans.
"The grant portion from the US was very little, right, so the large bulk of it is loans that's going to be withdrawn, and quite easily, we can find alternative funding to replace that gap because we're talking about a significant chunk of a loan component rather than a grant."
He said the grant had been a small portion of this US funding and so, in terms of mobilising additional funding through concessional loans and even better grants, "there's no crisis there".
