Trump launches multimedia broadside at SA president over 'genocide' in 'made-for-TV' meeting
Washington D.C.: President Donald Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House meeting by playing a video claiming that white farmers in South Africa were facing genocide under what he called "the opposite of apartheid".
The tense exchange, reminiscent of Trump’s earlier face-off with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, marked a sharp departure from the meeting’s initially cordial tone.
Ramaphosa, who had sought to reset U.S.-South Africa relations, remained composed, urging calm discussion despite Trump’s tactics. The U.S. president insisted that Afrikaners—descendants of Dutch colonists who ruled during apartheid—were being persecuted, a claim South Africa firmly denies.
The meeting took a dramatic turn when Trump dimmed the lights and played footage of former President Jacob Zuma and opposition leader Julius Malema singing 'Kill the Boer', an apartheid-era song. Ramaphosa countered that the video did not reflect government policy. Trump then presented images of white crosses, alleging they marked graves of murdered white farmers—a claim Ramaphosa said he would investigate.
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Trump doubled down, citing news articles about South African violence, interrupting Ramaphosa’s rebuttals to insist white farmers were targeted.
The discussion followed the arrival of 50 Afrikaners in the U.S. seeking asylum under Trump’s controversial offer.
Despite the friction, Ramaphosa later called the visit a trade success and dismissed Trump’s apartheid comparison, stating, "There’s no genocide in South Africa."
Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told South African TV station Newzroom Afrika that the Oval Office meeting was “an orchestrated show for the cameras” and that the “real business” of the trip was the bilateral closed-door meeting.
“President Ramaphosa came here not for a TV show, he came here to discuss with President Trump in earnest how we can reset the strategic relationship between South Africa and the US,” Magwenya said.