US President confronts the South African guide

A meeting was to relieve the tensions between the USA and South Africa when President Donald Trump put his counterpart on the defensive that white farmers were killed and “persecuted” in his nation.

On Wednesday, a week after the United States granted almost 60 Africans asylum – a step that South Africa ranked – President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House to regain the relationships between the countries.

Instead, Trump surprised Ramaphosa during a live press conference with widely discredited claims of a “white genocide” in South Africa.

During a protest of several crosses, he played a video with an exhibition and claimed that they were graves for murdered white farmers.

Trump said he didn't know where it was filmed in South Africa. In fact, the crosses are not actual graves, but to come from a protest from 2020 after a couple were killed in the province of Kwazulu-Natal. At the time, the organizers said that they are an exhibition in which farmers are represented who have been killed for years.

Before the White House meeting on Wednesday, the South African leader emphasized that improving trade relationships with the United States was a priority. The South African exports to the USA are exposed to a tariff of 30% as soon as a break to Trump's new import taxes ends in July.

Ramaphosa hoped to enchant Trump during the meeting to bring two famous South African golfers and give him a huge book with his country's golf courses.

The meeting took place days after the arrival of 59 white South Africans in the United States, where they were granted the refugee status. Ramaphosa said at the time they were “cowards”.

Nevertheless, the Oval Office meeting began until Trump lowered the lighting for a video presentation. The mood shifted.

The film showed the voice of the leading South African opposition figure Julius Malema: “Shooting the Boers [Afrikaner]Shooting the farmers ”. It then showed a field of crosses that the US President spoke about the pictures, said it was a grave of white farmers.

He handed over ramaphosa that were attacked in South Africa. Trump said that in South Africa he would look for a “explanation” of his guest about white “genocide” in South Africa, which were widely discredited.

Ramaphosa responded to the opposition chants in the video and said: “What you saw – the speeches that have been done … This is not a government policy. We have a multi -part democracy in South Africa that enables people to express themselves.”

“Our government policy is completely against what it is [Malema] I even said in parliament and they are a small minority party that may exist according to our constitution. “

Ramaphosa said on Wednesday that he was hoping that Trump would listen to the voices of the South Africans on this topic. He referred to the white members of his delegation, including the golfers Ernie Els and Retief Gooses and the richest man in South Africa, Johann Rupert.

“If there was a genocide, these three men would not be here,” said Ramaphosa.

Trump interrupted: “But they allow them to take land, and when they take the country, they kill the white farmers, and when they kill the white farmers, nothing happens to them.”

“No,” replied Ramaphosa.

The US leader seemed to refer that Malema and his party, who are not part of the government, have the authority to confiscate land from white farmers, which they do not do.

A controversial law that Ramaphosa signed at the beginning of this year enables the government to apply privately owned without compensation under certain circumstances without compensation. The South African government says that no country has yet been confiscated according to the law.

Ramaphosa recognized that “crime in our country … people who are killed by criminal activities are not just white people, but most of them are black people”.

Regarding the crosses in the video, Trump said: “The farmers are not black. I don't say that this is good or bad, but the farmers are not black …”

South Africa does not publish racial crime figures, but the latest figures show that almost 10,000 people were murdered in the country between October and December 2024. Of these, a dozen were killed in agricultural attacks, and one of the 12 was one farmer, while five farm residents and four employees who were probably black were.

International claims in South Africa have been widespread under legal groups for years. In February, a South African judge rejected the claims as “clearly imagined” and “not real” when he decided in an inheritance case that contained a donation to the white supremacist group.

When Trump pressed the problem, Ramaphosa remained calm – and tried to edit his charm by making a joke about offering an airplane for the USA.

He called the name of the anti-Apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and said that South Africa was still committed to reconciliation of races.

When a journalist asked what would happen if white farmers left South Africa, Ramaphosa in love with his white Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen said that most farmers wanted to stay.

But Trump repeatedly fired Salvos in Ramaphosa, who avoided getting a screaming match with him – something that had happened to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he scored Trump in the same room in February.

After the confrontation, Malema mocked the meeting and described it as “a group of older men who meet in Washington to clap me”.

“No significant amount of intelligence evidence for the genocide of white genocide was provided. We will not agree to affect our political principles for land development without compensation for political expediency,” he said to X.

Patrick Gaspard, former US ambassador to South Africa under the then President Barack Obama, described the meeting as “really embarrassing”.

“It is clear that a trap was determined for the South African president. There was all intent to humble him to embarrass South Africa,” she said.

The head of the best -known African interest group South Africa announced the BBC on Wednesday evening that “there are real problems that have to be addressed” when asked about the Trump/Ramaphosa meeting.

When asked whether Afriiforum, a South African NGO that represents AkriFans in the country, also contributed to making the video shown in the Oval Office of the White House, said Ceo Kallie Kriel that the group “used some of these video recordings in some of our videos, but we did not do this with regard to this specific compilation”.

“This video material is very easily accessible to many people, but I think that the video was very important to only reach the change into a situation in which there can be no denialism, and if there are (sic) solutions, there are real problems that need to be addressed. And I think this video has made the point quite strong,” she said.

The tensions between South Africa and the USA are not new.

Days after Trump's taking office for his second term in January in January, Ramaphosa signed the controversial law that enables South Africa's government in cases where it is classified as “fair and in the public interest”.

The move was only used to affect Africa's image in the eyes of the Trump government – already angered by his genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

In February, the US President announced the suspension of critical help in South Africa and offered to enable members of the African community – mainly white descendants of former Dutch and French settlers – to settle as refugees in the United States.

The South African ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was also excluded in March after accused Trump of “mobilizing supremacism” and trying to “project white victim as a dog whistle”.

Additional reporting from Khanyisile Ngcobo and Farouk Chothia