Updated May 21, 2025 at 1:42 PM CDT
JOHANNESBURG — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa walked into an ambush when he met President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
After a cordial beginning, where Ramaphosa was at pains to stress his desire to improve relations with the U.S., things turned hostile. Trump repeated his false claims of a 'white genocide' in South Africa and then ordered the lights dimmed to play videos he said supported his allegation.
Ramaphosa attempted to correct the U.S. leader, but mostly got talked over. He explained the videos of opposition politician Julius Malema singing an apartheid-era struggle song called "kill the boer" – which means farmer or Afrikaner – did not represent government policy.
In fact, Malema is a populist who was expelled from Ramaphosa's African National Congress. His Economic Freedom Fighters party won just 7 percent of the vote at national elections last year.
"They are a small minority party," Ramaphosa said. Trump then asked why Malema wasn't arrested. Malema has been taken to court over the song, but South Africa's constitution allows freedom of speech. Asked by reporters if he condemned the singing of the historic song, Ramaphosa said he did.
Trump also played a video that he said was of "a burial site" of murdered white farmers. Ramaphosa said: "Have they told you where this is? I'd like to know where this is?" South African media are reporting the video of white crosses is likely one that has been doing the rounds on social media for years and is probably a memorial site.
Ramaophosa's Minister of Agriculture, John Steenhuisen, who is white, also tried to explain the facts for Trump. As did South Africa's richest man and a friend of Ramaphosa's, business mogul Johann Rupert, who is also white.
While South Africa does suffer from high crime rates Black people bear the brunt of violent crime. Police statistics are not broken down by race, but show that about fifty farmers, farm workers and farm "dwellers" – the last two groups likely Black – are killed a year. These are mostly opportunistic attacks like robberies, because of farms isolated locations.
It was exactly what South Africans had been dreading, especially after Trump's televised hostility towards Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office earlier this year made headlines around the world.
The U.S. administration has repeatedly slammed Pretoria for what it falsely claims is the systematic persecution of white Afrikaner farmers – and the South African side has repeatedly tried to correct Washington. To no avail.
The list of the Trump administration's grievances with South Africa are any diplomat's nightmare. Trump cut aid to the country in February, his top officials have snubbed G20 events South Africa is hosting this year and the U.S. expelled South Africa's ambassador. The U.S. administration is also angry that Pretoria — a firm Palestinian ally — has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague over its war in Gaza.
Ramaphosa had wanted to use the meeting to set Trump straight regarding race relations in South Africa, but had also hoped to take a transactional tact and make a deal with Trump because a vital free trade agreement hangs in the balance amid other economic concerns.
Mandela's lead negotiator
Ramaphosa is a seasoned diplomat who played a pivotal role as one of the lead negotiators in the talks that ended apartheid and led to the historic election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first Black president.
Earlier this year, the South African leader tried to charm Trump by offering his fellow avid golfer a turn on the green at the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November. Ramaphosa had even enlisted the help of two famous South African golfers — Ernie Els, who knows Trump, and Retief Goosen — and brought them to the Oval Office meeting.
"I would say, if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture," Ramaphosa said.
But despite their presence and Ramaphosa's gift to Trump of a book on golf, the meeting quickly spiralled out of control. Ramaphosa and his delegation remained calm and cordial despite the misinformation that was being repeated.
Trump's South African-born advisor Elon Musk was also present at the meeting, but he didn't speak much. He has also been highly critical of South Africa and has slammed the country's affirmative action laws, which he claims prevent his Starlink satellite company from entering the market. On Tuesday, reports suggested that Ramaphosa might offer the Tesla billionaire some kind of deal ahead of his White House meeting.
South African media will now be doing post-mortems of the meeting for weeks, but initial take-aways are generally of the opinion that Ramaphosa – unlike Zelenskyy– had kept his composure despite some serious provocation.
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