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.
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 Trump’s currently suspended raft of import taxes.
But in a carefully choreographed Oval Office onslaught, 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 Trump’s request, the video – played on a television that is not normally set up in the Oval Office – showed white crosses, which Trump asserted were the graves of white people, and opposition leaders making incendiary speeches. 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,” 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.
