US President Donald Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House meeting by playing a video he claimed showed a “white genocide” in South Africa – an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory long promoted by far-right circles.
According to The Guardian, the Oval Office confrontation on Wednesday was marked by Trump’s insistence that South Africa is now experiencing “the opposite of apartheid.”
Ramaphosa, who said he came to Washington to “reset” bilateral relations, was ostensibly caught off guard by the video, which included footage of former President Jacob Zuma and opposition leader Julius Malema singing the struggle song Kill the Boer, Boer being a term to describe the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa.
Trump insisted, “We have thousands of stories talking about it,” and told aides, “Turn the lights down and just put this on.”
Ramaphosa said the content of the video did not reflect government policy. When Trump showed what he claimed were graves of over a thousand white farmers, Ramaphosa replied, “I haven’t seen that before. I’d like to find out where that is.”
Ramaphosa acknowledged that crime is a serious issue in South Africa, noting that most of the victims are Black.
Trump, however, interrupted Ramaphosa’s attempt at providing context.
“The farmers are not Black,” he said, continuing with a pile of newspaper headlines that he read aloud as “Death, death, death, horrible death.”
“Apartheid – terrible. That was the biggest threat. That was reported all the time. This is sort of the opposite of apartheid. What’s happening now is never reported. Nobody knows about it,” Trump added.
Referring to Afrikaners seeking asylum in the US, Trump said, “They’re white farmers, and they’re fleeing South Africa… and it’s a very sad thing to see.”
He accused Ramaphosa’s government of allowing land seizures and executions: “You do allow them to take land – and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer… they’re being executed and they happen to be white.”
Ramaphosa responded by citing Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s anti-apartheid activist and the first president of the post-apartheid nation.
“We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around the table and talk about them,” he said. “And this is precisely what we would also like to talk about.”
The meeting came amid already deteriorating US-South Africa relations, worsened by Trump-era tariffs, cuts in aid, and the expulsion of South Africa’s ambassador over criticism of Trump’s “MAGA” movement.
Trump’s meeting with Ramaphosa has drawn a distinct parallel to his infamous February meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after which Trump hinted that his heated exchange with Zelensky was part of a strategy to pressure Ukraine into making certain decisions, saying: “We had to get Ukraine to do the right thing.”
Though South Africa has maintained ties with Russia, with the country having hosted joint naval exercises with Russian troops in recent years, Ramaphosa has recently backed Zelensky’s call for an unconditional ceasefire, an idea rejected by Moscow.
Who are the Afrikaners, and what’s the controversy?
Afrikaners are a white ethnic group in South Africa descended primarily from Dutch settlers who colonized the region starting in the 1600s.
They speak Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch and one of the few European languages to fully develop outside of Europe. Historically, Afrikaners held dominant political and economic power under apartheid – a system of institutionalized racial segregation that lasted from 1948 to the early 1990s.
In recent years, far-right figures in the West, including Trump and South-African born billionaire Elon Musk, have pushed the narrative that Afrikaners – especially white farmers – are victims of a so-called “white genocide.”
They claim that they are being systematically murdered and that the South African government is failing to protect them or is even complicit.
While violent crimes, driven by poverty and financial instability, remain a major issue in South Africa, there’s no credible evidence of a state-sponsored campaign or genocide against white farmers.
South African officials and independent researchers have consistently rejected the white genocide claim as racist fearmongering.
Trump posted a social media update in 2018 that he would ask then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate the “large-scale killing of farmers.” The issue has since been revived occasionally by right-wing media and figures, often as part of anti-immigration or “great replacement” conspiracy rhetoric.