President Donald Trump turned down the lights in the Oval Office and turned the tables on South Africa’s president, playing a video of Black activists calling for seizing the land of white farmers and showing gravestones that he offered as proof of a “genocide.”
Cyril Ramaphosa, whose initial remarks offered warm praise for Trump in an effort to “reset” the relationship, said that the speeches by “a small minority party” were “not government policy” and that he was unfamiliar with the images of the graves.
The ensuing back-and-forth was contentious at times and went on for more than a half hour, televised, as Trump, eager to highlight unproven claims of “genocide” against South Africa’s white population, was loath to let it go.
“Have they told you where that is, Mr. President?” Ramaphosa said. “I’d like to know where that is, because this I’ve never seen.”
Pointing to additional printed images that he said showed evidence of genocide and claiming that “white South Africans are fleeing because of the violence and racist laws,” the president was caught off-guard when asked what he wanted Ramaphosa to do about it.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The White House shared the video, which played on a large television wheeled into the Oval, with the press corps after the meeting.
While Trump and former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson have pushed the narrative of Afrikaner persecution for several years, there is no evidence of a genocide. While some white farmers have been murdered, those cases account for less than one percent of the country’s 27,000 murders annually.
Additionally, the president’s claims of land seizures are exaggerated. While Ramaphosa signed a law earlier this year laying out circumstances in which the state can seize land for public purposes, most landowners are compensated.
As Trump continued to insist that “when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens,” Ramaphosa attempted to counter, acknowledging that “there is criminality in our country” and making clear he was willing to talk about the president’s concerns.
“People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity, are not only white people. The majority of them are Black people,” Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa, who requested Wednesday’s White House visit to reset relations and wanted to focus mostly on trade, suggested that the conversation would be more productive without the press in the room. But Trump did not dismiss the contingent of journalists from the Oval, instead taking another question and continuing his broadside.
“You’re taking people’s land away from them,” Trump continued.
“We’re not,” replied Ramaphosa, who called on his minister of agriculture, a white man from an opposition party, to back him up.
The minister, John Henry Steenhuisen, noted that the Black politicians shown in the video exhorting violence against white farmers were from “opposition minority parties” that his and Ramaphosa’s coalitions joined together to block from power.
Vice President JD Vance, seated on a couch beside Trump, then interjected with a question for Ramaphosa.
“So you denounce that type of language in the video?” he asked.
“Oh yes, we’ve always done so,” Ramaphosa responded. “We are completely opposed to that.”
But Trump wouldn’t relent, asking Ramaphosa why those opposition leaders were allowed to go free after speech that encouraged violence.
“Why wouldn’t you arrest that man?” Trump said “He said: ‘Kill the white farmers!’”
At one point, Trump referenced Elon Musk, the South Africa-born billionaire and informal adviser who stood to his left behind the sofa. But the Tesla, Starlink and SpaceX CEO did not speak.
Ramaphosa brought with him two white professional golfers from South Africa, Retief Goosen and Ernie Els, who spoke about crime in South Africa and urged Trump to help the country address the situation.
As the public part of the meeting hit the hour mark, a reporter asked Trump if he was convinced that genocide is occuring in South Africa. Despite the certainty with which he’d spoken about the situation, he hedged: “I haven’t made up my mind.”
In their initial comments, both leaders had elided over the issue, exchanging pleasantries and compliments. Ramaphosa thanked Trump for sending South Africa ventilators during the Covid pandemic and said he’d been practicing golf at Trump’s urging.
Trump, perhaps tipping his hand and what was to come, was somewhat more circumspect, describing Ramaphosa as “certainly, in some circles, really respected — in other circles, a little bit less respected. Like all of us, in all fairness.”
