US President Donald Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a meeting at the White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday when he claimed that a “genocide” against white Afrikaners is taking place in South Africa. This claim has been widely discredited.
Here are some of the key moments from the meeting.
Ramaphosa came bearing golfers and a book
The South African leader appeared to have arrived at the Oval Office with hopes of mending a tricky relationship between the United States and South Africa.
Trump started the meeting by referring to Ramaphosa as a man who is, “in some circles, really respected, other circles, a little bit less respected, like all of us in all fairness”.
Trump’s love for golf is no secret and, perhaps in the hope of defusing tension, Ramaphosa brought along two of South Africa’s top golfers, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, both of whom are white. “These two guys are unbelievable,” Trump said.
Ramaphosa also presented Trump with a repository of South Africa’s golf courses, compiled in a book weighing 14kg (31 pounds) and featuring writing by Els. White businessman Johann Rupert — South Africa’s richest man — was also part of Ramaphosa’s delegation.
Trump accused South Africa of ‘white genocide’
During the meeting, Trump repeatedly claimed that genocide against white farmers is taking place in South Africa, an allegation denied by Ramaphosa.
Earlier this month, 59 white “refugees” were flown from South Africa to the US as part of a relocation plan for white South Africans devised by the Trump administration.
Trump told Ramaphosa that these were white farmers fleeing violence directed at them in South Africa. “We have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they’re coming to the United States,” said Trump. “People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety. Their land is being confiscated, and in many cases, they’re being killed.”
But Ramaphosa denied allegations of a “white genocide” in South Africa. “If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here,” the South African president said, referring to Els, Goosen and Rupert.
While murder is an issue in South Africa, a majority of victims are Black and are targeted by thieves, experts say, not for political reasons.
“There is no merit to Trump’s fantasy claims of white genocide,” South African historian Saul Dubow, professor of Commonwealth history at the University of Cambridge, told Al Jazeera. “South Africa is a violent country and, in economic terms, one of the most unequal societies in the world. The violence is criminal rather than political, though racial injustice inevitably forms part of the context.”
Dubow suggested that Trump may be more angry about South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, filed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023 in relation to the war on Gaza.
While the Trump administration is welcoming “refugees” from South Africa, it is simultaneously removing protections for those from other countries. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has revoked protection from deportation previously granted to more than 800,000 people who escaped conflict zones or danger in Venezuela, Haiti, Afghanistan and Cameroon.
‘Turn the lights down’: Trump displayed a video showing attacks
Trump claimed he had video and photo evidence to back up his “white genocide” allegations.
At one point during the meeting, the US president flipped through a stack of printed news clippings. “Death, death, death,” he said, showing the cameras one news article after another.
He held up one particular article from a publication called American Thinker, titled “Let’s talk about Africa, which is where tribalism takes you”. While the article mentions South Africa, Trump said that the thumbnail image showed white farmers being buried. However, the thumbnail proved to be a screengrab from a news clip about violence against women in Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Goma.
Trump then asked for the lights in the Oval Office to be dimmed and a five-minute video montage was displayed on a screen. The videos included one of a South African opposition figure, Julius Malema, the leader of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, singing the anti-apartheid song Dubul’ ibhunu (“Kill the Boer”) at a rally. The title of the song is often also translated as “kill the white farmer”.
Dubow said some populists do promote “inflammatory songs” such as “Kill the Boers” in South Africa. “This may or may not be meant literally,” he told Al Jazeera. “President Ramaphosa and the ANC [Ramaphosa’s party, African National Congress] do not support such rhetoric.”
Next, Trump went on the attack again. “You do allow them to take land,” Trump told Ramaphosa.
“Nobody can take land,” Ramaphosa said.
“When they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them,” Trump replied.
“There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately through criminal activity, are not only white people, majority of them are Black people,” Ramaphosa said. Trump cut him off, saying “the farmers are not Black”.
Talking about South Africa’s land reform law
In January, Ramaphosa signed a new land expropriation law aimed at righting apartheid-era wrongs in South Africa.
Under the new law, the government has the power to seize privately owned land from people of any race for public purposes and public interests. While the law provides for compensation payments, it also allows for seizure without compensation in certain instances. This law replaced a 1975 law which was criticised for lacking clear compensation plans and being legally ambiguous.
White South Africans are mostly either Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Dutch settlers or English-speaking descendants of British colonialists.
Until the 1990s, white Afrikaners controlled the country under the system of apartheid, a system which excluded the Black majority in South Africa.
Even though apartheid officially ended in 1994, several of the most successful business and farmland owners in South Africa are white and more than half of the country’s Black population is categorised as poor. White South Africans make up about 7 percent of the population but own more than 70 percent of the land.
“The long history of colonialism and land dispossession in South Africa has not been addressed. Historical racial injustice remains keenly felt. White farmers remain in possession of most of the productive land, 30 years after 1994,” Dubow said.
“White farmers, large producers in particular, have generally done well in the post-apartheid era. They are probably more vulnerable to American tariffs than physical attacks,” said Dubow.
In February, Trump froze aid to South Africa, saying the new land law permits the government to seize land from ethnic minority Afrikaners without compensation.
As of mid-May, however, no land had been forcibly taken by the South African government without compensation under the new law.
The Trump administration also extensively scaled back the operations of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), stripping aid organisations all over the world of foreign assistance. This put more than 8,000 workers in South Africa’s national HIV programme out of work.
“South Africans keenly feel the withdrawal of American support of HIV/AIDS programmes,” Dubow said. “A key question is the future of the AGOA [African Growth and Opportunity Act] agreement, signed in 2000, which allows tariff-free exports to the United States. South African manufactured motor cars and agricultural exports would be hit should AGOA not be renewed,” he added. As of 2024, 32 sub-Saharan countries are eligible for AGOA benefits.
“Another indicator will be whether Trump attends the upcoming G20 in South Africa.”
Angling for a trade deal
Ramaphosa had promised South Africans that he would present a trade deal to the US, so he talked about the history of economic cooperation between Washington and Pretoria, and dangled access to “rare earth minerals”.
“We’ve got critical minerals that you want to fuel the growth of your own economy and reindustrialise. So, we have that on offer, including rare earth minerals,” Ramaphosa told Trump.
South Africa holds large reserves of gold, platinum group metals, chrome ore, manganese ore, zirconium, vanadium and titanium.
Critical minerals are important for the manufacturing of clean energy and machinery and for the production of technology including mobile phones, solar panels and electric vehicles. In March, Trump invoked wartime powers to direct federal agencies to identify mines and government-owned land that could be exploited to boost the production of critical minerals.
South Africa is one of many countries eager to forge a new trade deal with the US in order to avoid Trump’s threat of punishing tariffs. On April 2, which Trump called “liberation day,” he slapped a 31 percent reciprocal tariff on South Africa, currently on a 90-day pause. The US’s universal 10 percent tariff on overseas goods remains in place, including for South Africa.
In 2023, 7 percent of South Africa’s exports went to the US and 6.4 percent of its imports came from the US, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC).
While the two countries did not confirm a trade agreement at Wednesday’s meeting, Ramaphosa told reporters afterwards that the discussion was “a great success”. He added that he presented a framework for a trade deal to Trump, and the two agreed to continue having discussions to figure out the specifics of this deal.
Not the first such ambush
This was not the first time a foreign leader has faced a hostile atmosphere in the Oval Office.
On February 28, an Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump turned sour. During the meeting, Trump and his Vice President JD Vance publicly accused Zelenskyy of not being thankful enough for US support to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
