South Africa has not had a functioning embassy in Washington for over 10 years
C5 Capital CEO Andre Pienaar stated that South Africa has not had a functioning embassy in Washington for 10 years, seriously hampered its diplomatic ties with the United States.
C5 Capital, a specialist venture capital firm that invests in cybersecurity, space and energy security, with offices in Washington, DC, London, Luxembourg and Vienna.
Apart from leading C5 Capital, Pienaar serves on several boards, including BlueVoyant in the United States, Ionir in Israel, and the Haven Group in Luxembourg.
In addition to his corporate board memberships, he serves on the Advisory Council of the United States Institute for Peace, a U.S. government agency.
In South Africa, Pienaar is known for co-founding the Scorpions, a specialised crime-fighting unit established under Nelson Mandela.
Pienaar, based in Washington, has close ties with many influential U.S. officials and possesses a good understanding of the political system.
He told the State of the Nation podcast that it is in South Africa’s interest to re-establish strong relations with the United States.
South Africa has already been hit with crippling tariffs on exports to the United States, and some bills have been tabled to introduce targeted sanctions against the country.
“Sanctions are extremely harsh economic instruments, and once a country has people under sanction, it has a ripple effect on the whole country,” he said.
“It placed a country in a new category alongside Iran, North Korea, and Russia. You end up in a completely different basket of countries.”
Pienaar warned that although sanctions may only target specific individuals, they always affect the economy of the whole country.
“Targeted sanctions slow down economic growth and steer the economy in an entirely different direction,” he said.
He said it is in South Africa’s interest to repair the relationship with the United States and self-reflect on how the country landed in this situation.
This is why Pienaar supports the numerous South African delegations to the United States, which aimed to resolve the problems.
South Africa has not had a functioning embassy in Washington for 10 years
In March 2025, the Trump administration expelled South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool.
This expulsion followed comments from Rasool that US President Donald Trump was mobilising a supremacism and trying to project white victimhood as a dog whistle.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Rasool of hating the US and President Donald Trump, and said the ambassador was no longer welcome in our great country.
In April 2024, Ramaphosa appointed MTN chairman Mcebisi Jonas as his special envoy to the United States, serving as the official representative of the South African government.
However, this was a controversial choice. MTN’s close ties with Iran and Jonas’ previous criticism of Trump meant that he was not popular in the United States.
In July 2025, former DA Spokesperson on International Relations & Cooperation Emma Louise Powell made a startling allegation.
She said Ramaphosa has, for months, been fully aware that his special envoy, Mcebisi Jonas, was not welcome in Washington D.C.
“The United States of America denied Mcebisi Jonas a diplomatic visa in May this year. The US government has formally rejected Jonas’s credentials,” she said.
The Presidency hit back, accusing the DA of spreading disinformation on matters of international relations and diplomacy.
However, Pienaar confirmed the challenges South Africa faces in the United States, saying South Africa has not had a functioning embassy in Washington for 10 years.
“One of the problems the ANC has is that it does not have a functioning embassy in Washington, D.C. This has been the case for over a decade,” Pienaar said.
He added that it is a problem that South Africa does not currently have an ambassador in the United States.
“Ramaphosa’s most recent choices, Rasool and Jonas as special envoy, have been entirely unsuitable for very specific reasons,” Pienaar said.
This makes it difficult for the ANC to obtain accurate information from Washington, D.C., and make informed and accurate assessments. “They have no frame of reference to do it,” he said.
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