U.S. President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday with allegations of mass killings and land seizures from white people, in a scene evocative of his February ambush of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
South Africa rejects the allegation that white people are disproportionately targeted by crime. Murder rates are high in the country, but the inviting maturity of victims are Black.
Ramaphosa arrived saying he wanted to bandy trade and critical minerals, and the meeting got off to a cordial launch as he and Trump changed reflections about golf. Champion South African golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen were present as part of Ramaphosa’s delegation.
But the televised Oval Office meeting soon took a different course, with Trump showing a videotape and published papers purporting to show substantiation to back up his unsupported claims that white South Africans are being bedeviled.
” People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety. Their land is being sequestered, and in numerous cases, they are being killed,” said Trump in one of a series of allegations.
South Africa, which endured centuries of draconian demarcation against Black people during colonialism and intolerance before getting amulti-party republic in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, rejects Trump’s allegations.
A new land reform law, aimed at revenging the shafts of intolerance, allows for preemptions without compensation when in the public interest, for illustration if land is lying free. No similar appropriation has taken place, and any order can be challenged in court.
The videotape shown by Trump showed white crosses which Trump said were the graves of thousands of white people, and opposition leaders making inflammatory speeches. Trump suggested that one of them, Julius Malema, should be arrested.
LAND REFORM AND ISRAEL
Ramaphosa substantially sat vacant while the videotape was played, sometimes heightening his neck to look at it. He said he had n’t seen it ahead, and that he’d like to find out what the position was.
Trump also displayed published clones of papers that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying” death, death” as he flipped through them.
Ramaphosa said there was crime in South Africa, and the maturity of victims were Black. Trump cut him off and said” The growers are n’t Black.”
Ramaphosa responded” These are enterprises we’re willing to talk to you about.”
The South African leader remained collected throughout the scene.
In recent months, Trump has criticised the land reform law and South Africa’s genocide court case against Israel.
He has cancelled aid, expelled South Africa’s minister and offered retreat to white nonage Afrikaners grounded on ethnical demarcation claims Pretoria says are unwarranted.
The United States is South Africa’s alternate- biggest bilateral trading mate after China. But the country is facing a 30 tariff under Trump’s presently suspended” Liberation Day” governance, and Ramaphosa was keen to bandy a trade deal and business openings.
latterly in the meeting, South African business mogul Johann Rupert, who was part of Ramaphosa’s delegation, stepped in to back up Ramaphosa, saying that crime was a problem across the board and numerous Black people were dying too.
He jounced to Elon Musk, Trump’s South Africa- born billionaire supporter who was also present in the Oval Office, by saying that his Starlink telecoms systems were demanded in every South African police station to combat crime.