Bilateral trade between South Africa and Zimbabwe has nearly doubled in four years. Yet for the families and workers on both sides of the Limpopo, that growth has not translated into equal benefit, and both governments now say the imbalance can no longer be left unaddressed.
President Cyril Ramaphosa made that case Friday at the OR Tambo Building in Pretoria, where he opened the fourth session of the South Africa-Zimbabwe Bi-National Commission alongside Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa. The gathering was formal, but the stakes Ramaphosa described were grounded in everyday economic life: jobs, food, energy, water, and the movement of ordinary people across a shared border.
“South Africa exports much more to Zimbabwe than it imports,” Ramaphosa said plainly, calling the imbalance a barrier to sustainable partnership. He urged both countries to use the existing Memorandum of Understanding on Economic Cooperation to narrow the gap, and to push harder through the African Continental Free Trade Area to shift what flows between them toward greater balance.
The people most directly affected by that imbalance are those in manufacturing and agriculture, sectors Ramaphosa identified as the clearest path to correction. Both countries hold substantial mineral wealth and farming capacity that still produce too little in the way of finished goods and steady employment. Zimbabwe’s expanding output of gold, platinum, lithium and other critical minerals positions its mining communities as potential beneficiaries of a shift toward value-added processing at home rather than raw material exports. South Africa is moving in the same direction, and Ramaphosa framed the two nations’ interests as genuinely complementary.
Infrastructure is where that ambition meets daily life. Ramaphosa called for coordinated development of bridges, roads, dams, airports, health facilities and schools connecting production sites to markets. The Development Bank of Southern Africa and the Industrial Development Corporation, he said, stand ready to finance high-impact projects in Zimbabwe. For communities near those future sites, the difference between a functioning road and an absent one is the difference between reaching a market and watching produce spoil.
Meanwhile, energy and water cooperation carry their own urgency for households and farms. Ramaphosa pointed to the Southern African Power Pool as a vehicle for the region to become a leader in clean, affordable and reliable energy. On water, he held up an existing agreement to supply water from Zimbabwe’s Beitbridge Water Works to Musina as a working model of bilateral cooperation on basic needs, one that matters most to the residents of those towns who depend on it.
Agriculture forms the third pillar. Both countries have arable land and farming communities capable of producing more, but climate change and El Niño droughts continue to threaten water sources and grazing land. Ramaphosa called for policies strengthening both communal and commercial farming, a distinction that matters to smallholder families whose livelihoods sit outside the commercial sector but whose food security does not.
Border communities also featured in his remarks. Ramaphosa called for modernized facilities and systems to ease the movement of people and goods, while intensifying efforts against trans-border crime. For the traders, commuters and families who cross regularly, the quality of that crossing shapes daily life in ways that diplomatic communiques rarely capture.
Ramaphosa also raised broader regional concerns, expressing alarm at conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cabo Delgado in Mozambique, Madagascar, Sudan and South Sudan, as well as the Sahel insurgency. Displacement and loss of life in those places, he said, make peaceful conflict resolution and dialogue more critical, not less, in an unpredictable geopolitical moment.
He congratulated Zimbabwe on its election to a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2027-2028 term, describing the achievement as a reflection of shared history and common destiny.
His closing message was direct: the Bi-National Commission must deliver concrete results for the people of both nations, not merely diplomatic gestures. A ministerial report to the commission is expected to assess progress and identify specific opportunities across mining, energy, agriculture, transport, logistics and water management. Whether those assessments translate into tangible change for the workers, farmers and border communities who stand to gain most remains the open question.