Trump Confronts South African President Cyril Ramaphosa Over Claims Of ‘White Genocide’ In His Country, Ramaphosa Pushes Back

In a tumultuous meeting in the Oval Office between President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump shared a video montage attempting to prove the existence of a “white genocide” in his country.

This move comes a few weeks following the White House chartering a plane to bring white South Africans to the U.S. as refugees, even though Trump suspended the State Department refugee admissions program on his first day of his second term.

For Ramaphosa, the goal of the meeting was to discuss trade. Still, Trump had different plans while showing a video of opposition party leader Julius Malema singing an apartheid-era song that can be translated to “shoot the white farmer.”

Trump also brought news clippings from The Daily Mail of attacks on white farmers.

“These are articles over the last few days – a death of people, death, death, horrible death, death, death,” Trump said while flipping through the articles. “White South Africans are fleeing the violence and ‘racist’ laws,” he continued, reading the headline.

Trump also showed a burial site, claiming it was all graves of Afrikaners, the white minority in South Africa. According to the Mail, the image appeared to be the “Witkruis Monument, which honors both white and black farmers who have died in attacks.”

While Trump tried to use Malema’s singing as proof that the government is complicit in the “white genocide,” Ramaphosa saw the situation very differently.

“That is not government policy. We have a multi-party democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves,” Ramaphosa tried to explain. “And in many cases, or some cases, those policies do not go along with government policy.”

“Our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying, even in the parliament, and a small minority party, which is allowed to exist in terms of our Constitution,” Ramaphosa said. 

Despite claims by Trump that Malema should be arrested for singing this song and that the government allows white-farmers’ land to be taken, violence in South Africa is not colorblind.

“There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity are not only white people, a majority of them are black people,” Ramaphosa said. 

Gareth Newham, who is the head of a justice and violence prevention program at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, noted there is no evidence of a genocide or targeted violence in the country.

“Attacks where there may be evidence of racial or political motives (i.e., slogans written on the wall at a scene of a crime, or words spoken by the attacker according to the victim), are exceedingly rare and make up only a few percent of the cases recorded,” Newham told PBS. “The majority of murder victims nationwide are poor, under- or unemployed young Black males.”

Despite appearances to the contrary, Ramaphosa said the meeting went “very well.”

Last month, the Trump Administration expelled the South African ambassador after he made anti-Trump remarks.