WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday with explosive false claims of white genocide and land seizures during a tense White House meeting that was reminiscent of his February ambush of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but the overwhelming majority of victims are Black.
Mr. Ramaphosa had hoped to use Wednesday’s meeting to reset his country’s relationship with the U.S., after Trump canceled much-needed aid to South Africa, offered refuge to white minority Afrikaners, expelled the country’s ambassador and criticized its genocide court case against Israel.
The South African president arrived prepared for an aggressive reception, bringing popular white South African golfers as part of his delegation and saying he wanted to discuss trade. The U.S. is South Africa’s second-biggest trading partner, and the country is facing a 30% tariff under Mr. Trump’s currently suspended raft of import taxes.
But in a carefully choreographed Oval Office onslaught, Mr. Trump pounced, moving quickly to a list of concerns about the treatment of white South Africans, which he punctuated by playing a video and leafing through a stack of printed news articles that he said proved his allegations.
With the lights turned down at Mr. Trump’s request, the video – played on a television that is not normally set up in the Oval Office – showed white crosses, which Mr. Trump asserted were the graves of white people, and opposition leaders making incendiary speeches. Mr. Trump suggested one of them, Julius Malema, should be arrested.
The video was made in September 2020 during a protest after two people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses did not mark actual graves. An organizer of the protest told South Africa’s public broadcaster at the time that they represented farmers who had been killed over the years.
“We have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they’re coming to the United States,” Mr. Trump said. “So we take from many … locations, if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on,” he added, referring specifically to white farmers.
“People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety. Their land is being confiscated, and in many cases, they’re being killed,” the president added, echoing a once-fringe conspiracy theory that has circulated in global far-right chat rooms for at least a decade with the vocal support of Mr. Trump’s ally, South African-born Elon Musk, who was in the Oval Office during the meeting.
South Africa, which endured centuries of draconian discrimination against Black people during colonialism and apartheid before becoming a multi-party democracy in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, rejects Mr. Trump’s allegations.
A new land reform law, aimed at redressing the injustices of apartheid, allows for expropriations without compensation when in the public interest, for example if land is lying fallow. No such expropriation has taken place, and any order can be challenged in court.
South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, with 44 linked to farming communities. Eight of those victims were farmers.
Mr. Ramaphosa, sitting in a chair next to Mr. Trump and remaining poised, pushed back against his claims.
“If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here,” Mr. 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 Mr. Trump.
“We have thousands of stories talking about it, and we have documentaries, we have news stories,” Mr. Trump said. “It has to be responded to.”
‘THERE IS JUST NO GENOCIDE’
Mr. Ramaphosa mostly sat expressionless during the video presentation, occasionally craning his neck to look at the screen. He said he had not seen the material before and that he would like to find out the location.
Mr. Trump then displayed printed copies of articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying “death, death” as he flipped through them, eventually handing them to his counterpart.
Mr. Ramaphosa said there was crime in South Africa, and the majority of victims were Black. Mr. Trump cut him off and said: “The farmers are not Black.”
Mr. Ramaphosa responded: “These are concerns we are willing to talk to you about.”
The South African president cited Mandela’s example as a peacemaker, but that did not move the U.S. president, whose political base includes white nationalists. The myth of white genocide in South Africa has become a rallying point for the far right in the United States and elsewhere.
“I will say: apartheid, terrible,” Mr. Trump noted. “This is sort of the opposite of apartheid.”
The extraordinary exchange, three months after Trump and Vice President JD Vance upbraided Ukraine’s Zelenskiy inside the same Oval Office, could prompt foreign leaders to think twice about accepting Trump’s invitations and risk public embarrassment.
Unlike Mr. Zelenskiy, who sparred with Mr. Trump and ended up leaving early, the South African leader kept his calm, praising Mr. Trump’s decor – the president has outfitted the Oval Office with gold accessories – and saying he looked forward to handing over the presidency of the Group of 20 next year.
Mr. Trump declined to say whether he would attend the G20 meeting in South Africa in November.
Later in the meeting, Mr. Rupert, the business tycoon, stepped in to back up Mr. Ramaphosa, saying that crime was a problem across the board and many Black people were dying too.
Following the meeting, Mr. Ramaphosa sought to focus on trade, telling reporters the two countries had agreed to discuss critical minerals in South Africa. His trade minister said the government had submitted a trade and investment proposal that included buying liquefied natural gas from the U.S.
But the president also flatly denied Mr. Trump’s allegations about a wave of racial violence against white farmers.
“There is just no genocide in South Africa,” he said. — Reuters
