Johannesburg – The Democratic Alliance (DA) has lambasted President Cyril Ramaphosa for visiting his Zimbabwean counterpart Emmerson Mnangagwa at his farm.
Although the SA Presidency described the trip on Sunday, 3 May 2026, as a “working visit”, the DA said it “condemns, in the strongest possible terms, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s unofficial visit to Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s private residence”.
RELATED: President Ramaphosa’s Visit To Zimbabwe Quashes Coup Rumours – The Bulrushes
This visit takes place as the ruling ZANU-PF attempts to entrench its dictatorship in Zimbabwean law through the recently gazetted Constitution Amendment Bill No. 3.
The controversial Bill would introduce far-reaching proposals to usher in extended and potentially limitless presidential terms for the ZANU-PF under the guise of technical reforms to electoral cycles and governance structures.
“It is deeply telling that both President Ramaphosa and International Relations and Cooperation Minister (DIRCO), Ronald Lamola, remained deafeningly silent when President Mnangagwa and his regime arrested and detained Zimbabwean opposition leader, Tendai Biti, on the afternoon of 21 March 2026,” said Ryan Smith, DA Spokesperson on International Relations and Cooperation.
Biti, who is the leader of the Constitution Defenders Forum (CDF), was detained by state authorities along with other party members and a local journalist in the town of Mutare while trying to incentivise greater public participation in the proposed constitutional amendment.
The DA, the second largest party in the Government of National Unity (GNU), which is led by the African National Congress (ANC), criticised its partner.
“While the Presidency has tried to spin this visit as an ‘n-person catch-up between two neighbours’, it is blatantly clear that once again South African foreign policy under ANC continues to sideline our constitutional values of freedom, democracy, and human rights in favour of propping up the African fraternity of despots and dictators the ANC relies on for regional support,” Smith said.
“Furthermore, the presence of Zimbabwean businessmen Wicknell Chivhayo and Kudakwashe Tagwirei, known colloquially as the Zimbabwean Guptas, raises serious questions around President Ramaphosa’s semblant support for regional corruption and state capture on an international scale.”
Smith asked what the point of the R1 billion Zondo Commission was if President Ramaphosa himself had learned nothing from the outcome?
“Zimbabwe’s democratic backslide is the sole reason for the immigration crisis South Africa has been subjected to since the late 90s, which places a tremendous burden on civic and social services and stokes violent societal division in our country,” said Smith.
“It is not the people of Zimbabwe who are to blame for fleeing to South Africa for a better life; it is President Ramaphosa and the ANC who continue to ignore human rights abuses and democratic capture in their own backyard out of pure political expediency.
“Populist South African politicians who continue to stoke the flames of xenophobia and ethnic hatred in our country are merely capitalising on the symptom of a problem the ANC itself has created.”
Smith said for as long as South Africa refuses to stand up and “condemn dictators and human rights abusers on our continent, our country will forever be the only place of asylum for the refugees the ANC continues to create”.
He added: “This is yet another example of the ANC’s diplomatic hypocrisy as it selectively addresses human rights abuses elsewhere in the world while ignoring the same acts just next door.
“The ANC does not address human rights abuses out of principle; it only does so where it can gain political mileage.”
Smith said it was blatantly clear that the ANC “has no interest” in the regional stability of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or its members.
“The South African government continues to pretend that nothing is wrong in neighbouring democracies, that civilians are not massacred in the streets by their governments, or that opposition is violently stifled and contained,” Smith said.
“The ANC’s cognitive dissonance between South Africa’s diplomatic responsibilities as a regional power and its own interests as a political party is the single largest threat to SADC’s stability and prosperity.”
As a member of the GNU, the DA said it rejects the ANC’s attempts to openly fraternise with neighbouring dictators and deny the lived reality of millions of persecuted Zimbabweans who live in international limbo as a result.
“It is unsustainable and deeply unprincipled for the ANC to maintain the status quo of democratic capture on the African continent,” said Smith.
“Tens of thousands of South Africans lost their lives in the fight for freedom, yet today’s ANC sits side by side with the enemies of freedom across the continent.”
