It was meant to be a meeting to reset the relationship between the United States and South Africa, but it quickly turned into another awkward Zelensky-style moment in the Oval Office.
In Washington to discuss trade and world peace with Donald Trump, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa found himself being confronted by Trump with a video showing the alleged burial grounds of dead white farmers he claimed were killed by black South Africans trying to take their land.
“You’re taking people’s land away from them, and those people in many cases are being executed,” Trump said, with the world’s most famous white South African, Elon Musk, standing nearby.
“They’re being executed and they happen to be white and most of them happen to be farmers... I don’t know how do you explain that.”
The meeting began cordially enough, with Ramaphosa bringing famous South African golfer Ernie Els and a 14-kilogram golfing book to curry favor with Trump.
But things took a turn a few minutes later when a reporter asked Trump what it would take to convince him that there was no genocide.
Ramaphosa decided to step in and answer the question.
“It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends,” he said.
“I would say, if there was African farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture (who is white and from an opposition party). He would not be with me. So it will take him, President Trump, listening to their stories, to their perspective. That is the answer to your question.”
Trump was having none of it. As tensions escalated, Trump ordered his staff to turn the lights down so he could play a video showing the alleged grave treatment of white farmers, including apparent burial sites of those he claimed had been killed by black South Africans.
“Now these are very bad. Right here, burial sites, over a thousand white farmers,” he said. “It’s a terrible sight, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The plight of white farmers in South Africa has been a pet project of Trump’s since his first term, where he amplified allegations by some Afrikaners that they are being harassed, and in some cases, killed by black South Africans.
In recent months he has also expelled the South African ambassador to the US and given political asylum to white farmers. The first group of arrived in the US a few weeks ago.
Ramaphosa sought to push back on Trump’s claims, at one point quizzing the president on where the burial sites on the video were located, as he had not seen them in his country. Tensions eased when Els was invited to speak.
He told the president he was a proud South African who had grown up during apartheid, but added: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.
“We want to see the way forward and see our nation flourish,” he said.
Trump told the former champion that he was a better speaker than a golfer, prompting laughs from those in the room.
