Trump Ambushes South African President With Racism Claims

U.S. President Donald Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a high-level White House meeting on Wednesday, confronting him with a video and printed reports that he claimed proved the existence of a “white genocide” against Afrikaner farmers in South Africa—an accusation long dismissed as a far-right conspiracy theory.

The tense encounter, described by observers as one of the most strained Oval Office meetings since Trump’s notorious 2020 bullying of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, marked a low point in already deteriorating U.S.–South Africa relations.

Ramaphosa, who said he had come to Washington to “reset” diplomatic ties, maintained a composed demeanor as Trump abruptly turned the meeting from a cordial exchange into a charged confrontation. After Ramaphosa asserted that “there is no genocide against Afrikaners,” Trump ordered staff to dim the lights and play a video he said showed evidence to the contrary.

The footage included clips of controversial South African figures—former President Jacob Zuma and opposition leader Julius Malema—singing a historic anti-apartheid song, “Kill the Boer.” Trump claimed the song and other imagery in the video confirmed systematic violence against white farmers. Ramaphosa responded calmly, noting that the song was not current government policy and that South African crime affects all communities, with the vast majority of victims being Black.

Trump was joined in the meeting by Elon Musk, U.S. Senator JD Vance, and other officials and journalists. He handed out newspaper clippings and insisted on reading aloud headlines about farm attacks. “Death, death, death, horrible death,” Trump said. “The farmers are not Black.”

The Cato Institute and other watchdogs have repeatedly debunked the notion of a targeted genocide against white South Africans, noting that South Africa’s high crime rate affects all racial groups. Trump, however, persisted in labeling the situation “the opposite of apartheid” and called the arrival of white South African asylum seekers in the U.S. “a big problem.”

The meeting took place just days after approximately 50 white South Africans reportedly arrived in the U.S. under a special offer of “refuge” extended by Trump—a controversial move given the administration’s ongoing restrictions on asylum seekers from other regions.

Despite the tension, Ramaphosa remained diplomatic. “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.

Relations between the U.S. and South Africa have sharply declined in recent months. The U.S. has slashed aid, imposed steep tariffs, and expelled South Africa’s ambassador in response to Pretoria’s public criticism of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and its support for the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.