Trump to Press South Africa's President to Pare Back Racial Equity Laws

New York Times

21-05-2025

President Trump plans to press President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa to roll back the country's racial equity laws and to do more to protect Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority, in a meeting scheduled at the White House on Wednesday, according to a White House official.
The meeting comes a little more than a week after the Trump administration welcomed a group of white South Africans to the United States as refugees after they claimed they were persecuted in their home country. Tensions between the two countries have ratcheted up over racial issues, as Mr. Trump's administration has sought to make global his crusade to eradicate policies around diversity and redressing historical inequities.
Among the topics Mr. Trump is likely to raise is the alleged discrimination against Afrikaners, according to the official, who spoke about the meeting on the condition of anonymity. Members of the white minority group, descendants of European colonialists who ruled during apartheid, were among those brought to the United States on a U.S.-funded charter plane.
Mr. Trump has steadily dismantled the country's refugee system that had provided sanctuary for those fleeing war, famine and natural disasters, but made an exception to accommodate the expedited resettlement of the Afrikaners.
In the White House meeting, Mr. Trump may also press for the South African government to condemn an anti-apartheid chant that called for the killing of Afrikaners, which the governing party, the African National Congress, distanced itself from years ago.
Mr. Trump, who has also amplified false claims of a 'genocide' of white farmers, is also expected to ask that the government of South Africa classify farm attacks as a priority crime, the official said. He is expected to request that U.S. companies be exempt from a requirement that foreign-owned entities sell equity in their businesses to Black South Africans or others who were locked out of ownership opportunities during apartheid.
That requirement is at the center of much of the criticism leveled against South Africa by Elon Musk, who has called it racist and blamed it for preventing him from bringing his satellite internet company, Starlink, to his native country.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has taken aggressive actions against South Africa, citing allegations of racial discrimination against the country's white population.
That included cutting off all foreign aid to South Africa for engaging in what he called 'race-based discrimination.' Mr. Trump also expelled South Africa's ambassador after that official accused him of playing into white grievance in America. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he would skip a Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting in South Africa, in part due to its promotion of what he deemed 'D.E.I.,' or diversity, equity and inclusion.
Trump administration officials have argued that laws seeking to combat inequity have hurt white South Africans, and that white people in the United States could be similarly disenfranchised by policies aimed at tackling systemic racism.
Mr. Trump is also likely to discuss with Mr. Ramaphosa the countries' trade imbalance, and the fact that South Africa's economy has stagnated. Ultimately, the U.S. wants to argue that the country's laws dealing with race threaten to collapse its economy, the White House official said.
For his part, Mr. Ramaphosa is expected to try to convince Mr. Trump that the United States has a lot to gain from maintaining close ties with South Africa, the largest economy in Africa. He is expected to present a proposal for a trade deal between the two countries that would include ensuring that the United States gets improved access to South Africa's wealth of critical minerals that are necessary for producing clean energy technology.
The South African president is also expected to seek a reset in his relationship with Mr. Musk, the Trump ally who is one of South Africa's loudest critics.
The United States is South Africa's second-largest trading partner, but government officials say that many of their policies that upset Mr. Trump are necessary to undo the racial inequality created during apartheid.
Like many other South Africans, Mr. Ramaphosa appeared to be angered by Mr. Trump's resettlement program. In the days after the white South Africans left for the United States, Mr. Ramaphosa called their migration a 'cowardly' act.
Mr. Trump launched his attacks on South Africa this year after Mr. Ramaphosa signed into law a measure that gives the government the ability to take private property without paying compensation. Although legal experts say uncompensated seizures are subject to strict judicial review and are likely to be rare, Afrikaner community leaders have expressed fears that white farmers will have their land taken from them.
Mr. Trump has been railing against South Africa's proposed land reforms since 2018. That year, he proclaimed on social media that he had ordered his secretary of state to 'closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.'
Days before Mr. Trump issued his executive order halting aid to the country, Mr. Ramaphosa defended the recently adopted Expropriation Act, writing in a post on X that it was 'not a confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process.' He said he looked forward to explaining the difference to the Trump administration.
Police data doesn't support claims of targeted killings of white farmers. But Christopher Vandome, a senior research fellow with the Africa program at the think tank Chatham House, noted that such claims spoke to a larger fear among Afrikaners in South Africa.
Mr. Vandome said that much of the friction over the farm deaths and the land bill was part of a 'sense of victimhood due to the paranoia of always expecting there to be retribution for what happened in the past.'
The Trump administration, he said, was using 'a mix of fact and misinterpretation' in its criticism of South Africa's laws underpinned by race.
'This is kind of the Trumpian way,' Mr. Vandome said. 'You mix these things together, so it makes it very, very hard to engage with.'