During a contentious meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Oval Office, Donald Trump made false claims of white persecution in South Africa. While Trump pushed falsehoods, Ramaphosa attempted to rebut Trump’s comments, but Trump kept interrupting him and forcing the false claims again. At one point, Trump had his staff play a video made up of clips that were several years old of incendiary speeches given by South African politicians that have gone viral on social media.
Trump Pushes False Claims
The sources of those videos are unknown. Vincent Magwenya, South Africa’s presidential spokesperson, said the video was a “poor compilation of old videos.” Adding it was all a “complete lie.”During the meeting, Trump held up newspaper articles that he claimed were about violent attacks on white farmers in South Africa.
“I don’t know, all of these are articles over the last few days, death of people, death, death, death, horrible death,” Trump said. Trump went on to claim that White South Africans were “fleeing because of the violence and the racist laws. This is sort of the opposite of apartheid. What’s happening now is never reported. Nobody knows about it,” Trump added.
South Africa Comments Lies
Ramaphosa pushed back at Trump, telling him the speeches in the clips were not “government policy.” He added that the people in the clips were not members of the South African delegation, but instead part of extremist fringe political groups.”There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity are not only white people, the majority of them are Black people.”
Ramaphosa said. Ramaphosa said it would take Trump “listening to the voices of South Africans” to change his view. The South African government has repeatedly denied the claims that there was a genocide.“I would say if there were Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture,” Ramaphosa said. “He would not be with me. So, it’ll take him, President Trump, listening to their stories and perspective.”
There Is No Genocide
Ramaphosa later told the media, there is just no genocide in South Africa.” He added that much of the violence in his country is due to its struggling economy and “when the economy is not growing, when there’s poverty, when there’s unemployment, one of the social ills that we get as a derivative is criminality that spreads itself around the countries, not only on farms or rural areas, it’s even in urban areas.”
“The issue of whether what he terms as genocide can be equated to the struggle,” he said. “And of course it cannot, because there is just no genocide in South Africa. And of course, it is an issue of how one looks at it. We require more investment from the United States, and we require a more positive disposition from the United States,” Ramaphosa said.
During his meeting with Trump, Ramaphosa repeatedly tried to steer the conversation to trade and economic investment, which was what the meeting was supposed to be about. No matter how hard he tried to get the conversation started, Trump reverted to the treatment of white South Africans.
Trump’s Behavior Expected
A spokesperson for Ramaphosa said that he expected to be confronted by Trump and that the U.S. president would put on a “show.”You saw how calm President Ramaphosa remained the whole time — that should tell you it didn’t come as a surprise. At no point did he lose his cool – he remained elegant, dignified,” The spokesperson said.
