Trump confronts South Africa's Ramaphosa with false claims of white genocide
U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
By Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason
U.S. President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday with explosive false claims of white "genocide" and unfair land seizures during a tense White House meeting that was reminiscent of his February ambush of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Murder rates are high in South Africa, but the overwhelming majority of victims are Black.
Ramaphosa arrived prepared for an aggressive reception, bringing popular white South African golfers as part of his delegation and saying he wanted to discuss trade.
But in a carefully choreographed Oval Office onslaught, Trump pounced, moving quickly to a list of concerns about the treatment of whites, which he punctuated by playing a video and leafing through a stack of printed news articles that he said proved his allegations.
"We have many people that feel they're being persecuted, and they're coming to the United States. So we take from many ... locations, if we feel there's persecution or genocide going on," Trump said, referring specifically to white farmers.
"People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety. Their land is being confiscated, and in many cases, they're being killed."
South Africa, which endured centuries of draconian discrimination against Black people during colonialism and apartheid before becoming a multi-party democracy in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, rejects Trump's allegations.
A new land reform law, aimed at redressing the injustices of apartheid, allows for expropriations without compensation when in the public interest, for example if land is lying fallow. No such expropriation has taken place, and any order can be challenged in court.
Ramaphosa, sitting in a chair next to Trump and remaining poised, pushed back against his claims.
"If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentleman would not be here," Ramaphosa said, referring to golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen and billionaire Johann Rupert, who were present in the room.
That did not satisfy Trump.
"We have thousands of stories talking about it, and we have documentaries, we have news stories," Trump said before directing that the video be played. "It has to be responded to."
He then asked that the lights in the Oval Office be turned down. The video, played on a television that is not normally set up in the Oval Office, showed white crosses, which Trump said were the graves of white people, and opposition leaders making incendiary speeches. Trump suggested that one of them, Julius Malema, should be arrested.
LAND REFORM AND ISRAEL
Ramaphosa mostly sat expressionless during the presentation, occasionally craning his neck to look at the screen. He said he had not seen the material before and that he would like to find out the location.
Trump then displayed printed copies of articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying "death, death" as he flipped through them, eventually handing them to his counterpart.
Ramaphosa said there was crime in South Africa, and the majority of victims were Black. Trump cut him off and said: "The farmers are not Black."
Ramaphosa responded: "These are concerns we are willing to talk to you about."
The South African president cited Mandela's example as a peacemaker, but that did not move the U.S. president, whose political base includes white nationalists, either. The myth of white genocide in South Africa has become a rallying point for the far right in the United States and elsewhere.
"I will say: apartheid, terrible," Trump noted. "This is sort of the opposite of apartheid."
Unlike Zelenskiy, who sparred with Trump and Vice President JD Vance during their White House meeting and ended up leaving early, the South African leader kept his calm, praising Trump's decor - the president has outfitted the Oval Office with gold accessories - and saying he looked forward to handing over the presidency of the Group of 20 next year.
Trump declined to say whether he would attend the G20 meeting in South Africa in November.
In recent months, Trump has criticized the land reform law and South Africa's genocide court case against Israel.
He has canceled aid, expelled South Africa's ambassador and offered refuge to white minority Afrikaners based on racial discrimination claims Pretoria says are baseless.
The United States is South Africa's second-biggest bilateral trading partner after China. But the country is facing a 30% tariff under Trump's currently suspended "Liberation Day" regime, and Ramaphosa was keen to discuss a trade deal and business opportunities.
Later in the meeting, South African business tycoon 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 many Black people were dying too.
He nodded to Elon Musk, Trump's South Africa-born billionaire ally who was also present in the Oval Office, by saying that his Starlink telecoms systems were needed in every South African police station to combat crime.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Nikkei Asia
3 hours ago
- Nikkei Asia
Thai and Cambodian forces to resume previous positions on border, Thailand says
BANGKOK (Reuters) -- Thailand and Cambodian forces will return to their previously agreed positions, Thai Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said, following talks on Sunday, after both reinforced their military presence in response to a deadly clash last month. For days, the two governments have exchanged statements, saying they were committed to finding a peaceful resolution after a Cambodian soldier was killed during a clash on May 28 in an undemarcated border area.
7 hours ago
Akazawa Vows to Redouble Efforts for Tariff Accord with U.S.
News from Japan Society Jun 8, 2025 18:42 (JST) Tokyo, June 8 (Jiji Press)--Japan's top tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa on Sunday pledged to step up his efforts to help Tokyo and Washington reach an agreement at an envisaged bilateral summit later this month. "I will do as many things as I can" in the run-up to the expected meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and U.S. President Donald Trump, Akazawa told reporters. Akazawa, minister for economic revitalization, made the remarks after returning home the same day from Washington, where he held the fifth round of negotiations with the U.S. side on a possible review of the Trump administration's high tariff policy. Ishiba and Trump may hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the three-day Group of Seven summit in Canada from June 15. Regarding the view within the Japanese government that it is difficult to persuade the Trump administration to withdraw all of its tariff measures, Akazawa said: "The series of U.S. measures are regrettable. There is no change at all in our stance of urging the U.S. side to review its tariff measures." [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.] Jiji Press
The Mainichi
8 hours ago
- The Mainichi
The 911 presidency: Trump flexes emergency powers in his second term
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Call it the 911 presidency. Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors. Whether it's leveling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion. An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump's 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors. The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress' authority and advance his agenda. "What's notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president," said Ilya Somin, who is representing five U.S. businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs. Because Congress has the power to set trade policy under the Constitution, the businesses convinced a federal trade court that Trump overstepped his authority by claiming an economic emergency to impose the tariffs. An appeals court has paused that ruling while the judges review it. Growing concerns over actions The legal battle is a reminder of the potential risks of Trump's strategy. Judges traditionally have given presidents wide latitude to exercise emergency powers that were created by Congress. However, there's growing concern that Trump is pressing the limits when the U.S. is not facing the kinds of threats such actions are meant to address. "The temptation is clear," said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program and an expert in emergency powers. "What's remarkable is how little abuse there was before, but we're in a different era now." Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has drafted legislation that would allow Congress to reassert tariff authority, said he believed the courts would ultimately rule against Trump in his efforts to single-handedly shape trade policy. "It's the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit," Bacon said of Congress' power over trade. "And I get the emergency powers, but I think it's being abused. When you're trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that's policy, not emergency action." The White House pushed back on such concerns, saying Trump is justified in aggressively using his authority. "President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden -- wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Trump frequently cites 1977 law to justify actions Of all the emergency powers, Trump has most frequently cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify slapping tariffs on imports. The law, enacted in 1977, was intended to limit some of the expansive authority that had been granted to the presidency decades earlier. It is only supposed to be used when the country faces "an unusual and extraordinary threat" from abroad "to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States." In analyzing executive orders issued since 2001, the AP found that Trump has invoked the law 21 times in presidential orders and memoranda. President George W. Bush, grappling with the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on U.S. soil, invoked the law just 14 times in his first term. Likewise, Barack Obama invoked the act only 21 times during his first term, when the U.S. economy faced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The Trump administration has also deployed an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify deporting Venezuelan migrants to other countries, including El Salvador. Trump's decision to invoke the law relies on allegations that the Venezuelan government coordinates with the Tren de Aragua gang, but intelligence officials did not reach that conclusion. Congress has ceded its power to the presidency Congress has granted emergency powers to the presidency over the years, acknowledging that the executive branch can act more swiftly than lawmakers if there is a crisis. There are 150 legal powers -- including waiving a wide variety of actions that Congress has broadly prohibited -- that can only be accessed after declaring an emergency. In an emergency, for example, an administration can suspend environmental regulations, approve new drugs or therapeutics, take over the transportation system, or even override bans on testing biological or chemical weapons on human subjects, according to a list compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. Democrats and Republicans have pushed the boundaries over the years. For example, in an attempt to cancel federal student loan debt, Joe Biden used a post-Sept. 11 law that empowered education secretaries to reduce or eliminate such obligations during a national emergency. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually rejected his effort, forcing Biden to find different avenues to chip away at his goals. Before that, Bush pursued warrantless domestic wiretapping and Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in camps for the duration of World War II. Trump, in his first term, sparked a major fight with Capitol Hill when he issued a national emergency to compel construction of a border wall. Though Congress voted to nullify his emergency declaration, lawmakers could not muster up enough Republican support to overcome Trump's eventual veto. "Presidents are using these emergency powers not to respond quickly to unanticipated challenges," said John Yoo, who as a Justice Department official under George W. Bush helped expand the use of presidential authorities. "Presidents are using it to step into a political gap because Congress chooses not to act." Trump, Yoo said, "has just elevated it to another level." Trump's allies support his moves Conservative legal allies of the president also said Trump's actions are justified, and Vice President JD Vance predicted the administration would prevail in the court fight over tariff policy. "We believe -- and we're right -- that we are in an emergency," Vance said last week in an interview with Newsmax. "You have seen foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, threaten the American people with the loss of critical supplies," Vance said. "I'm not talking about toys, plastic toys. I'm talking about pharmaceutical ingredients. I'm talking about the critical pieces of the manufacturing supply chain." Vance continued, "These governments are threatening to cut us off from that stuff, that is by definition, a national emergency." Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to rein in a president's emergency powers. Two years ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would have ended a presidentially-declared emergency after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep it in place. It failed to advance. Similar legislation hasn't been introduced since Trump's return to office. Right now, it effectively works in the reverse, with Congress required to vote to end an emergency. "He has proved to be so lawless and reckless in so many ways. Congress has a responsibility to make sure there's oversight and safeguards," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who cosponsored an emergency powers reform bill in the previous session of Congress. He argued that, historically, leaders relying on emergency declarations has been a "path toward autocracy and suppression."
