Mbeki brought enormous pressure to bear on Mandela, causing him to recant publicly his earlier support for the war in Afghanistan: he now apologised for his views as "one-sided and overstated" and the new line was that Osama bin Laden should not be blamed for 9/11 until he had had a proper trial, ie, never. Deputy President Jacob Zuma was then pushed forward to make a notable alteration in the government line. Speaking at a Durban mosque, he accused the US of double standards and equated the war in Afghanistan with 9/11, saying both involved acts of terrorism. Soon government ministers were openly accusing the US of "war hunger" and urging "rebellion" against the hegemony of Western interests and ideology in international life.

When Powell visited South Africa in May 2001, he expressed strong concern about Zimbabwe's political crisis, and warned that it risked unravelling all the democratic gains in southern Africa. Although he was effusive in his public praise for Mbeki, he made it clear that he disapproved of South Africa's effective support for Robert Mugabe. Since the South African government, remarkably, had not provided Powell with any public dinner or platform from which to speak during his visit, Powell decided to take the bull by the horns and give a speech at Witwatersrand University. Mbeki's presidential office took this as a challenge. Powell's visit to Wits quickly became a nightmare. He was heckled and held a virtual hostage for an hour by left-wing students, many of whom belonged to the ANC-affiliated South African Students Congress (Sasco), holding placards reading "White House Nigger". There is little doubt that the ANC was usually able to control its Sasco allies and, more generally, what went on at Wits. Had the government really wanted to prevent a visiting dignitary from receiving such offensive treatment, it would certainly not have happened.

On his next visit to South Africa in September 2002 to address the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, Powell received exactly the same treatment. Powell was supposed to have spoken at 11am (a prime spot) but the South African chairman suddenly shifted him from this spot, allocating it instead to the rejectionist Palestinian foreign minister, Farouk Kaddoumi, who gave a bitterly anti-US speech. The displacement of the foreign minister of the world's only superpower by an obscure functionary of a semi-state with no real foreign policy amazed most of those present but later all became clear. By the time Powell rose to speak in his later slot, the public gallery had been packed with anti-US activists who howled him down. There was strong criticism of South Africa in diplomatic circles for having apparently set up Powell for such treatment.

This was formally denied by Jacob Zuma. However, for those who knew the Mbeki style, it merely confirmed the suspicion that this slap in the face for Powell had been planned in the presidential office. Then, as usual, the hapless Zuma had been pushed forward to face the music. Condoleezza Rice learnt from Powell's experience and never ventured to South Africa. Even the listing of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the "axis of evil" earned her bitter criticism from Mbeki's ANC, which was ostentatiously friendly with all three of those states.