Trump attacks South African president with video and false allegations of racism against whites

US President Donald Trump attacked South African President Cyril Ramaphosa by showing a video that he falsely claimed proved genocide against whites under "the opposite of apartheid."

This provocative ploy on Wednesday sparked the most tense Oval Office meeting since Trump bullied Volodymyr Zelensky in February. But Ramaphosa—who had previously stated that he came to Washington to "reset" the relationship between the two countries—refused to fall into the trap, suggesting that they "talk it out very calmly."

Trump has long asserted that Afrikaners, a minority largely descended from the Dutch colonialists who ruled South Africa during decades of apartheid, are being persecuted. South Africa denies this claim. Murder rates are high in the country, and the vast majority of victims are black. What began as a friendly meeting at the White House, punctuated by lighthearted jokes about golf, took a surprising turn when Ramaphosa told Trump that there was no genocide against Afrikaners.

"We have thousands of stories about this," Trump said, then ordered his staff to "turn off the lights and just turn this on."

Ramaphosa sat next to Trump in front of the fireplace, forced a smile, and turned to look at a large television screen, as Trump's ally, South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, JD Vance, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth, and diplomats and journalists from both countries watched.

The video included footage of former South African President Jacob Zuma and hardline opposition politician Julius Malema singing an apartheid-era struggle song called "Kill the Boer," which means farmer or Afrikaner, while supporters danced.

Ramaphosa responded calmly and firmly, stating that the views expressed in the video did not represent government policy.

There was also a video that Trump claimed showed the graves of more than 1,000 white farmers, marked with white crosses. Ramaphosa, who sat for most of the time expressionless, occasionally craning his neck to look, said he had never seen it before and wanted to know its location.

Trump then showed a collection of newspaper articles he said were from the past few days, covering the killings in South Africa. He read some of the headlines and commented: "Death, death, death, horrible death."

Ramaphosa acknowledged the existence of crimes in South Africa, saying that the majority of victims were black. Trump interrupted him, saying, "Farmers are not black."

The white genocide conspiracy theory has long been a staple of the racist far right, and has been amplified in recent years by Musk and right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson.

Trump continued to return to the topic during Wednesday's televised rally. "Now I will say, segregation: terrible," he said. "That was the biggest threat. It was reported all along. It's kind of reverse segregation."

"What's happening now is never reported. Nobody knows about it. All we know is that we're being flooded with people, with white farmers from South Africa, and that's a big problem."

“They are white farmers, and they are fleeing South Africa, and it is very sad to see. But I hope we can get an explanation for that, because I know you don’t want that,” he added. But Ramaphosa maintained a measured tone, saying, “Nelson Mandela taught us that whenever there are problems, people should sit down together and talk about them. And that is exactly what we would like to talk about as well.” The meeting came days after about 50 Afrikaners arrived in the United States to accept Trump’s offer of asylum. Trump made the offer despite the fact that the United States has suspended the arrival of asylum seekers from most of the world as part of his immigration crackdown.

Relations between the two countries have reached their lowest point since the end of apartheid in 1994. The United States condemned South Africa's case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza before the International Court of Justice, cut aid, announced a 31% tariff, and expelled the South African ambassador for criticizing Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement.

But the biggest point of contention was South Africa's Land Expropriation Act, signed into law last January and intended to address the historical inequalities that accompanied white minority rule. Ramaphosa denied that the law was being used to arbitrarily confiscate white-owned land and insisted that all South Africans were protected by the constitution.

But Trump falsely claimed: “You let them take over the land — and when they take over the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them… You take people’s land, and those people, in many cases, are lynched. They’re lynched while they’re white.”

It's worth noting that the campaign was not only driven by domestic considerations, but was also used as leverage against South Africa in international matters, including the lawsuit filed by the Ramaphosa government against Israel at the International Court of Justice.