{"id":825139,"date":"2025-05-22T09:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T07:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=825139"},"modified":"2025-05-22T10:37:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T08:37:04","slug":"ramaphosa-shakes-off-white-house-ambush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/825139\/ramaphosa-shakes-off-white-house-ambush\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramaphosa’s response to White House ambush"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

President Cyril Ramaphosa came to the White House looking to persuade President Donald Trump to stop floating the conspiracy theory that there\u2019s a genocide against White people in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, the man who\u2019d helped negotiate the end of apartheid walked into a trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa had sought the meeting with Trump in a bid to build a relationship with the president and boost trade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He brought two White South African professional golfers and the country\u2019s White agriculture minister plus a book on the sport to present to the US leader. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there was Afrikaner farmer genocide I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the cue.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump asked that the lights be dimmed and teed up a video that purported to back up his claims that White farmers are being targeted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among its images was leftist South African opposition leader Julius Malema chanting \u201ckill the Boer,\u201d which means farmer in Afrikaans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach one of those white things you see is a cross, and there\u2019s approximately a thousand of them,\u201d Trump said, as the video showed a field of white crosses representing White farmer deaths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re taking people\u2019s land away from them and those people in many cases are being executed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The episode confirmed the fears of some of Ramaphosa\u2019s advisers, who had warned he was being lured into an Oval Office encounter similar to the one that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy experienced earlier this year when Trump berated him over his handling of Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was \u201cdefinitely an ambush, because the program format was changed at the last minute,\u201d South African Presidency spokesman Vincent Magwenya said in an interview after the meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou could see, standing in inside the Oval Office, that this was a well-planned, well-orchestrated operation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat video and those articles had no credibility whatsoever,\u201d he added. \u201cBut from here onwards, we can now deal with substantive issues, because they\u2019ve made the point, they will feel good they\u2019ve made the point, and we can now focus on what needs to be done to take the relationship forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rand weakened as the discussion between Trump and Ramaphosa became more heated. It traded 0.1% lower at 17.9450 per dollar by 20h25 in Johannesburg, reversing an earlier gain of as much as 0.4%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three decades after the end of White rule \u2014 during which Black people were subjugated and excluded from commercial and political life \u2014 the income of White families is on average almost five times as much as Black families, Statistics South Africa said in a January report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White people own more than 70% of rural land owned by individuals even though they make up around 7% of the national population. Killings of farmers \u2014 another specter raised by Trump \u2014 have been falling over the last 20 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s even as more than 27,000 people are murdered annually in South Africa, with a disproportionate number of the victims being young men in low-income areas including predominantly Black townships. No land has been seized by the state since apartheid ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There were multiple signs that Trump and his team had this welcome in mind for Ramaphosa in order to defend their decision to grant refugee status to White South Africans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the last minute, the administration changed the program to put the leaders in front of press cameras instead of first having a private meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The television that played the video was prepositioned to the side of the leaders \u2014 unusual for an Oval Office sitdown with a foreign leader. As Ramaphosa defended himself, Vice President JD Vance handed Trump a stack of paper he said backed up his views.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White House\u2019s official X account almost immediately posted the exchange with the caption \u201cPresident Trump always brings the receipts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The head of Afriforum, the fringe Afrikaner group that lobbied the first Trump administration and helped\u00a0plant the seed<\/a>\u00a0for some of the president\u2019s claims, said the video was similar to some of their own content.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s the White House\u2019s own compilation of video material that we\u2019ve also used,\u201d said Kallie Kriel, chief executive of Afriforum, in a voice note. The group hasn\u2019t claimed there\u2019s a genocide of White Afrikaners and hasn\u2019t taken Trump up on his offer of asylum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I think it was important,\u201d he added, because it put issues like \u201cproperty rights and infringement of human rights through racial measures and also this \u2018Kill the Boer\u2019 question\u201d on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe reality is that they know that what they\u2019re claiming is not true,\u201d said Magwenya, the South African spokesman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, President Trump was never going to back down from a claim that he has consistently made, and it is a claim that aligns with his constituency, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa had initially struck\u00a0an upbeat tone<\/a>\u00a0at the meeting, calling for a reset in ties between the two countries and to advance trade. And after the video aired, Ramaphosa kept his cool and didn\u2019t push back too hard on Trump \u2014 unlike Zelenskiy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stressed the necessity for the countries to work together and as reporters were ushered out of the room, said \u201cthey don\u2019t like to leave \u2014 they like you so much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa’s comments after the meeting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At a post-meeting media briefing, Ramaphosa again tried to put a positive spin on the ordeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said they\u2019d had constructive closed-door talks about continuing to engage on trade and expressed confidence that he would see Trump at the gathering of Group of 20 leaders in Johannesburg in November. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the US didn\u2019t commit and top people have skipped G-20 meetings in the run-up to the leaders\u2019 summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the issue of genocide in South Africa, Ramaphosa said he didn\u2019t think Trump was convinced it was happening: \u201cMuch as he flighted the video and all those press clippings \u2014 in the end I do believe that there is doubt and disbelief in his head about all this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa also responded to a question about Trump\u2019s comparison of his claims about White farmers to apartheid. \u201cOf course it cannot\u201d be compared \u201cbecause there is just no genocide in South Africa,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump was joined in the room by his billionaire, Pretoria-born backer Elon Musk. Both have spread the conspiracy theory that the country that overcame apartheid is conducting a genocide against the White minority that once ruled it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are completely opposed to that,\u201d Ramaphosa said in response to a question about whether he denounced the remarks from those who appeared in the video. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has objected to a land bill that Ramaphosa signed late last year that will make it easier for the government to expropriate private property if it\u2019s in the public interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While similar to eminent domain laws in the US, the law in South Africa allows for expropriation without compensation in certain cases such as land that\u2019s been abandoned and state-owned property not in use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The South African president sought to explain the law and it\u2019s relationship to the country\u2019s apartheid era.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa, a lawyer who has led South Africa since 2018, was accompanied on his trip by the agriculture minister \u2014 John Steenhuisen, who has called claims of genocide \u201cnonsense\u201d \u2014 along with the trade and foreign ministers as well as billionaire Johann Rupert.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, Trump froze almost all aid to Pretoria, claiming it persecuted White Afrikaner farmers and took \u201caggressive positions\u201d toward the US, including filling a court case in the International Court of Justice that accuses Israel of genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, the US granted a first batch of White Afrikaners refugee status, flying them in on a chartered plane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Cyril Ramaphosa believes South Africa’s delegation to the US had constructive talks despite the Trump team’s media ambush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":825142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1293,10849,853],"class_list":["post-825139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-donald-trump","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825158,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825139\/revisions\/825158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}