US President Donald Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday over unsubstantiated claims of a white “genocide”, potentially straining relations further.
In an extraordinary meeting played out live in front of journalists, Mr Trump dimmed the lights in the Oval Office and played a video that purported to show evidence of a genocide against white farmers in South Africa.
Mr Ramaphosa sat mostly expressionless during the screening, at times turning his neck to look at the video. Mr Trump then displayed printed news articles that appeared to report deaths of white people in South Africa, saying “death, death” as he flipped through the pages.
“The farmers are not black, we don't say that's good or bad, but the farmers are not black,” he said, claiming that white people in the country were being murdered and their land stolen.
The confrontation between the two leaders began after a friendly initial chat, with Mr Trump complimenting South African golfers.
“We are essentially here to reset the relationship between the United States and South Africa,” Mr Ramaphosa said, adding that he wanted to discuss trade and critical minerals during his meeting with Mr Trump.
The South African government has denied the claims of genocide and Mr Ramaphosa, 72, who rose to prominence alongside Nelson Mandela during the struggle against apartheid, kept calm as he replied to Mr Trump's accusations, despite the US President interrupting and speaking over him several times.
“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 meeting comes after the US granted refugee status to 59 Afrikaners last week in a move that prompted outrage and ridicule in the US and around the world.
Afrikaners are the descendants of European colonisers mainly from the Netherlands who arrived in South Africa nearly 400 years ago.
In 1948, the all-white government of South Africa established the apartheid system, which persisted until the 1990s. Apartheid laws instituted strict separation between races and institutionalised discrimination, primarily against black South Africans.
The legacies of that system still linger, experts say. Despite making up only 7 per cent of the population, white people in South Africa still own the majority of land and are the highest earners.
The genocide accusations stem in part from a law Mr Ramaphosa signed in January, the Expropriation Bill, which allows the government to confiscate land, in some instances without compensation, and redistribute it to marginalised groups.
Mr Trump has made immigration a focus of his second term in the White House. He won the election on a promise to impose hardline immigration policies mainly at the southern border.
On his first day in office, Mr Trump suspended the asylum programme, a network of agencies and organisations that gave refuge to people from around the world fleeing violent conflicts, war and political persecution.
He has argued that migrants and foreign workers are a threat to the US and take advantage of the country. The Trump administration has defended what now appears to be making an exception for Afrikaners.
“Well, because it's a small subset, it's a new issue, and the President identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during testimony before the Senate committee on foreign relations on Tuesday.
“If you look at all the persecuted people in the world, it's millions of people – they can't all come here.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has stripped protections for thousands of Afghans, Venezuelans and Haitians who had been allowed to live in the US temporarily due to conflict and instability in their home countries.
The awkward confrontation is the most notable since Mr Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to the White House in February, accusing him of not being thankful enough for American support.
South Africa-US relations were already strained even before the admission of the Afrikaners. South Africa in late 2023 filed a case against US ally Israel at the International Court of Justice over its conduct in the war in Gaza, accusing Israel of committing genocide.
In an executive order in February, Mr Trump cut all US funding to South Africa, quoting what he described as its anti-white domestic policies and anti-American foreign policy. From the Oval Office, Mr Ramaphosa, called the move “devastating”.
In March, Mr Trump expelled the South African ambassador. He has said the US would skip the G20 Summit in South Africa, scheduled to take place in Johannesburg in November.
“The US really originated it and it's important that the United States continues to play a key role in the G20,” Mr Ramaphosa said.
Discussions in the Oval Office also touched on trade and the economy. The US has imposed a 30 per cent tariff on South Africa as part of Mr Trump's sweeping levies announced last month. An additional 25 per cent tariff was placed on South African-made vehicles entering the US, putting vehicle surcharges at 55 per cent.
Days after the tariffs were announced, Mr Trump put a 90-day pause in place to allow for negotiations.
Mr Trump's adviser Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa to a wealthy white family, was present at the Oval Office meeting. He complained in March that his Starlink service was not allowed to operate in South Africa because he was “not black” – a reference to affirmative action laws in the country that aim to increase black South Africans' economic participation.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Mr Ramaphosa plans to offer Mr Musk a “workaround” that would allow him to operate in the country.
