- Thursday, May 22, 2025
With reporters present, Trump had staff put the four-minute video on a large screen, saying it showed black South African politicians calling for the persecution of white people
By: India Weekly
IN a tense White House meeting that was reminiscent of the recent ugly spat with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, president Donald Trump ambushed South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday (21) by playing him a video that he claimed proved genocide is being committed against white people in his country.
Ramaphosa had hoped to use the White House meeting to reset his country’s relationship with the US, after Trump canceled aid to South Africa, offered refuge to white minority Afrikaners, expelled the country’s ambassador and criticized its genocide court case against Israel.
But the extraordinary stunt turned the usually staid diplomatic setting of the Oval Office into a stage for Trump’s contention that white South African farmers are being forced off their land and some have fled to the US.
With reporters present, Trump had staff put the four-minute video on a large screen, saying it showed black South African politicians calling for the persecution of white people.
“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,” Trump said.
Trump also showed news clippings that he said backed up his claims – although one actually featured a photo from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Death, death, death. Horrible death,” said Trump.
His statements echo a once-fringe conspiracy theory that was circulated in global far-right chat rooms for at least a decade with the vocal support of Trump’s ally, South African-born Elon Musk, who was in the Oval Office during the meeting.
Trump’s administration earlier this month granted refugee status to more than 50 white Afrikaners after it had stopped taking asylum seekers from the rest of the world.
But the South African president disputed Trump’s claims. And after initially appearing stunned by the move he stayed calm, avoiding the kind of row Trump had with Zelensky in February.
Ramaphosa denied that his country confiscates land from white farmers under a land expropriation law signed in January that aims to redress the historical inequalities of apartheid rule.
“No, no, no, no,” Ramaphosa responded. “Nobody can take land.”
He also insisted that most victims of South Africa’s notoriously high crime rate are black and said the politicians in the video were from the opposition.
Ramaphosa had arrived at the White House with two of South Africa’s top golfers, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen in a bid to woo the golf-loving US president.
“We are essentially here to reset the relationship between the United States and South Africa,” Ramaphosa said.
But Ramaphosa was left repeatedly trying to speak as the video played, even as Trump drowned him out. “Where is this?” added the South African president as he shuffled awkwardly in his seat.
In the video, firebrand far-left opposition lawmaker Julius Malema was shown singing “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” – an infamous chant dating back to the apartheid-era fight against white-minority rule.
The video finished with images of a protest in South Africa where white crosses were placed along a rural roadside to represent murdered farmers – but which Trump falsely said showed their graves.
“If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here,” Ramaphosa said, referring to golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen and billionaire Johann Rupert, all white, who were present in the room.
That did not satisfy Trump.
“We have thousands of stories talking about it, and we have documentaries, we have news stories,” Trump said. “It has to be responded to.”
At one point, Ramaphosa pleaded that they “talk about it very calmly.”
“We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around the table and talk about them,” he said.
The two champion golfers also sought to calm the waters when Trump asked them to speak.
“We want to see things get better in our home country. That’s the bottom line,” said four-time major winner Els.
The South African leader later tried to put a brave face on the meeting, saying it was a “great success” and that he still expected Trump to attend a G20 summit in Johannesburg in November.
He also said he did not think Trump fully believes there’s a genocide against whites despite the video.
“In the end, I mean, I do believe that there is this doubt and disbelief in his head about all this,” Ramaphosa told reporters.
