Donald Trump starred in a new tense meeting in the Oval Office of the White House by stating to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that he expects an “explanation” about the alleged “persecution” and “genocide” that the Afrikaner minority is reportedly facing after Washington granted refugee status to several white immigrant families.
The incident reminded of the embarrassing meeting of Trump and his vice president JD Vance who criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the cameras.
Several American media outlets defined Trump’s actions as an “ambush” against the South African president.
How was the tense meeting between Trump and the president of South Africa?
The President of the United States showed a video of almost five minutes, with old images, which was played during the meeting to the surprise of the South African delegation and was uploaded to X account of the White House. In it, the opposition politician Julius Malema appears singing a song that references the Afrikaners.
“There are a lot of people very concerned about South Africa (...) there are many people who feel persecuted,” Trump said, amplifying baseless accusations in a tense meeting with Ramaphosa, who reminded his host that several members of his delegation are Afrikaners, including the Minister of Agriculture, John Henry Steenhuisen.
“If there had been a genocide of Afrikaner farmers, I can bet that these gentlemen wouldn’t be here, including my Minister of Agriculture,” said the president of South Africa, to whom Trump responded by showing him the video and press clippings about this alleged persecution.
“I would like to see where that is, because I had not seen it,” said Ramaphosa, who explained that more black people than white people are dying due to the crime that exists in South Africa, in response to Trump who has insisted that in the case of Afrikaner farmers, they “are not black.”
The President of the United States said that there are “thousands of stories about it” regarding this alleged persecution, which has also been defended by South African right-wing activist Elon Musk, present in the Oval Office. Thus, Trump stated that this recent arrival of dozens of Afrikaners to the United States could be repeated if they believe that there is “persecution or genocide.”
On his part, Ramaphosa defended the agrarian policy that his government implemented earlier this year and pointed out that it only seeks to redistribute land after the injustices inherited from the apartheid regime.
“Our Constitution guarantees and protects the inviolability of land ownership,” said Ramaphosa, who denied that land is being taken away from people and reminded Trump that every country, including the United States, has the right to expropriate land for public use."
The racism of the apartheid of the white minority
During the racist apartheid regime (1948-1991), black South Africans were forcibly stripped of their lands, which were handed over to the white minority that, three decades later, still owns over 90 percent of the land despite representing 20 percent of the population.
The National Party of the Afrikaners was one of the main promoters of apartheid, which institutionalized racial segregation to give political, economic, and social control of South Africa to the white minority, relegating the black majority to a third-class group.