Ramaphosa firmly denies Trump claims of white genocide

United States President Donald Trump confronted visiting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday with explosive but unfounded claims of "white genocide" in South Africa, charges that Ramaphosa firmly denied.

During a tense meeting at the White House, 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 claimed proved his allegations.

With the lights turned down at Trump's request, the video, played on a television that is not normally set up in the Oval Office, showed white crosses on the side of a road, which Trump asserted were the graves of white people, and opposition leaders making incendiary speeches.

The video was made in September 2020 during a protest after two people were killed on their farm a week earlier. 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," Trump said.

Ramaphosa, who arrived in Washington prepared for an aggressive reception and with hopes of improving trade terms and easing bilateral tensions, rejected Trump's allegations during the meeting. He refuted the notion that white South Africans are fleeing the country due to racist policies. He said there was crime in South Africa, but the majority of the victims were black.

Trump's aggression and rudeness, reminiscent of his February meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, shocked observers. Most media outlets said that the information that Trump used during the meeting to try to prove that "white genocide" was happening in South Africa had "repeatedly been disproven".

"Of the laundry list of conspiracy theories brought out at Trump's meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa today, almost everything has been debunked. Some South Africans have said that they believe that the information is 'AfriForum propaganda'," CNN reported. AfriForum is a White Afrikaner lobby accused of being a White nationalist group.

Abbey Makoe, CEO of Global South Media Network in South Africa, said the allegation that minority Afrikaner farmers were being persecuted was a lie.

The lie was fabricated amid worsening relations between the US and South Africa, fueled by South Africa's move to haul US-backed Israel before the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide against the Palestinian people, he said.

"The saga of the Afrikaner minority, largely from the farming community, is therefore a convenient excuse to pounce on Pretoria with a harsh public relations campaign aimed at causing reputational harm," he said.

Ever since Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act into law in January, Trump has criticized the land reform law for "discriminating "against the country's white people.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly criticized South Africa, most notably by canceling the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding and claiming that a "genocide" against white South Africans is underway — an allegation denied by the South African government.

In March, the US expelled then South African ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, further straining relations. The expulsion came after Rasool addressed a webinar organized by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, commenting on the Trump administration.

"What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing supremacism against the incumbency at home," Rasool had said during the webinar.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that Trump would not participate in the upcoming meeting of the Group of 20 leaders in South Africa later this year.

"We decided not to participate in this year's G20 hosted by South Africa, either at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or at the level of the president, and this was largely due to some of these issues that they put on their agenda and which, as we think, they do not reflect the priorities of this administration," Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

South Africa has pushed back against the Trump administration's accusations, saying the executive order of freezing aid "lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa's profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid."

South African foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri defended Ramaphosa's handling of Wednesday's meeting.

"It's not in the president's (Ramaphosa's) nature to be combative. (He) looks at issues calmly, matter-of-factly. I think that's what we (should) expect of our presidents," he said.

Many in South Africa were baffled that the world's most powerful man could believe easily disproved claims about the ethnic cleansing of white South Africans that circulate on far-right social media.

Most victims of violent crime in South Africa are black and poor. South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, of which 44 were linked to farming communities. Of those, eight of the victims were farmers.

"I think Trump is naive and he's dealing with America's issues. So I don't think he has time to actually verify the facts," said Kudakwashi Mgwariri, a student at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Edith Mutethya in Nairobi, Kenya contributed to this story.

Xinhua - Agencies