Trump ambushes S African leader with claim of Afrikaners being 'persecuted'
A meeting meant to soothe tensions between the US and South Africa instead spiralled as President Donald Trump put his counterpart on the defensive with claims that white farmers in his nation were being killed and "persecuted".
On Wednesday, a week after the US granted asylum to nearly 60 Afrikaners - a move that rankled South Africa - President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House to reset the countries' relations.
Instead, Trump surprised Ramaphosa during a live news conference with widely discredited claims of a "white genocide" in South Africa.
He played a video showing an exhibit during a protest of several crosses lining a road - claiming they were burial sites for murdered white farmers.
Trump said he did not know where in South Africa it was filmed. The crosses, in fact, are not actual graves, but appear to be from a 2020 protest after a farming couple was killed in KwaZulu-Natal province. Organizers said at the time that they are an exhibit representing farmers killed over years.
Before Wednesday's White House meeting, South Africa's leader stressed that improving trade relations with the US was his priority. South African exports into the US face a 30% tariff once a pause on Trump's new import taxes ends in July.
Ramaphosa hoped to charm Trump during the meeting, bringing along two famous South African golfers and gifting him a huge book featuring his country's golf courses.
The meeting came days after the arrival of 59 white South Africans in the US, where they were granted refugee status. Ramaphosa said at the time they were "cowards".
Still, the Oval Office meeting began cordially, until Trump asked for the lighting to be lowered for a video presentation. The mood shifted.
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The film featured the voice of leading South African opposition figure Julius Malema singing: "Shoot the Boer [Afrikaner], Shoot the farmer". It then showed a field of crosses, which the US president, talking over the images, said was a burial site of white farmers.
He handed Ramaphosa what appeared to be print-outs of stories of white people being attacked in South Africa. Trump said that he would seek an "explanation" from his guest on claims of white "genocide" in South Africa, which have been widely discredited.
Ramaphosa responded to the opposition chants in the video, saying, "What you saw - the speeches that were made... that is not government policy. We have a multiparty democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves."
"Our government policy is completely against what he [Malema] was saying even in the parliament and they are a small minority party, which is allowed to exist according to our constitution."
Ramaphosa said Wednesday that he hoped Trump would listen to the voices of South Africans on this issue. He pointed out the white members of his delegation, including golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and South Africa's richest man, Johann Rupert.
"If there was a genocide, these three gentlemen would not be here," Ramaphosa said.
Trump interrupted: "But you do allow them to take land, and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer nothing happens to them."
"No," Ramaphosa responded.
The US leader seemed to be referencing that Malema and his party, who is not part of the government, have the power to confiscate land from white farmers, which they do not.
A controversial law signed by Ramaphosa earlier this year allows the government to seize privately-owned land without compensation in some circumstances. The South African government says no land has been seized yet under the act.
Ramaphosa did acknowledge that there was "criminality in our country... people who do get killed through criminal activity are not only white people, the majority of them are black people".
Referring to the crosses in the video, Trump said, "The farmers are not black. I don't say that's good or bad, but the farmers are not black..."
South Africa does not release race-based crime figures, but the latest figures show that nearly 10,000 people were murdered in the country between October and December 2024. Of these, a dozen were killed in farm attacks and of the 12, one was a farmer, while five were farm dwellers and four were employees, who are likely to have been black.
Claims of genocide in South Africa have circulated among right-wing groups for years. In February, a South African judge dismissed the claims as "clearly imagined" and "not real", when ruling in an inheritance case involving a donation to white supremacist group.
As Trump pressed the issue, Ramaphosa stayed calm - and tried to work his charm by making a joke about offering a plane to the US.
He invoked the name of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, saying South Africa remained committed to racial reconciliation.
Getty ImagesWhen a journalist asked what would happen if white farmers left South Africa, Ramaphosa deflected the question to his white agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, who said that most farmers wanted to stay.
But Trump kept firing salvoes at Ramaphosa, who avoided entering into a shouting match with him - something that happened to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he met Trump in the same room in February.
After the confrontation, Malema mocked the meeting, describing it as "a group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me."
"No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about white genocide. We will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency," he posted on X.
Patrick Gaspard, former US ambassador to South Africa under then-President Barack Obama, called the meeting "truly embarrassing".
"It is clear that a trap was set for the South African president. There was every intention to humiliate him, to embarrass South Africa, by extension," she said.
The head of South Africa's most prominent Afrikaners interest group told the BBC Wednesday night that "there are real issues that need to be addressed" when asked about the Trump/Ramaphosa meeting.
Asked whether Afriforum, a South African NGO representing Akrifaners in the country, helped make the video shown in the White House Oval Office, CEO Kallie Kriel said the group has "used some of that video footage in some of our videos, but in terms of that specific compilation, we did not make that."
"That video material is quite easily accessible to many people, but I think that video was very important to just get the shift to a situation that there can't be denialism, and if there is (sic) going to be solutions, then there are real issues that need to be addressed. And I think that video made the point quite strongly," she said.
Tensions between South Africa and the US are not new.
Days after Trump took office for his second term in January, Ramaphosa signed into law the controversial bill that allows South Africa's government to expropriate privately-owned land in cases when it is deemed "equitable and in the public interest".
The move only served to tarnish the image of Africa's biggest economy in the eyes of the Trump administration - already angered by its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
In February, the US president announced the suspension of critical aid to South Africa and offered to allow members of the Afrikaner community - who are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers - to settle in the US as refugees.
South Africa's ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was also expelled in March after accusing Trump of "mobilising a supremacism" and trying to "project white victimhood as a dog whistle".
Additional reporting by Khanyisile Ngcobo and Farouk Chothia
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