US president confronts South African leader with claim of Afrikaners ‘persecuted’

US President Donald Trump has confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on the White Home with a video that the US president stated helps his declare that white farmers are being “persecuted” within the nation.

The footage proven throughout a information convention with the South African chief purported to point out the gravesites of murdered farmers. Trump didn’t say the place it was filmed, and the footage has not been verified by the BBC.

Ramaphosa – who appeared to weigh up fastidiously reply – disputed Trump’s allegation. He stated black individuals have been much more prone to be victims of violence in South Africa than white individuals.

Trump additionally stated he would search an “clarification” from his visitor on broadly discredited claims of a white “genocide” in South Africa.

Ramaphosa got here to the White Home on Wednesday for commerce talks to reset US-South African relations.

He had hoped to appeal Trump with the inclusion of two of South Africa’s best-known golfers within the delegation. Ramaphosa additionally got here geared up with a present of an enormous e-book that includes his nation’s golf programs.

However after a cordial begin, the temper within the Oval Workplace shifted as Trump requested for the lighting to be lowered so a video may very well be performed.

The movie featured the voice of main South African opposition determine Julius Malema singing the track: “Shoot the Boer [Afrikaner], Shoot the farmer”.

It additionally confirmed a subject of crosses, which the US president, speaking over the photographs, stated was a burial website of white farmers.

He then handed Ramaphosa what gave the impression to be print-outs of tales of white individuals being attacked in South Africa.

“What you noticed – the speeches that have been made… that isn’t authorities coverage,” Ramaphosa responded.

“We’ve a multiparty democracy in South Africa that permits individuals to precise themselves.

“Our authorities coverage is totally in opposition to what he [Malema] was saying even within the parliament and they’re a small minority social gathering, which is allowed to exist based on our structure.”

Ramaphosa stated he hoped that Trump would take heed to the voices of South Africans on this situation.

The South African chief identified the white members of his delegation, together with golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and South Africa’s richest man Johann Rupert.

“If there was a genocide, these three gents wouldn’t be right here,” Ramaphosa stated.

Trump interrupted: “However you do enable them to take land, after which once they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and once they kill the white farmer nothing occurs to them.”

“No,” Ramaphosa responded.

Ramaphosa did acknowledge that there was “criminality in our nation… individuals who do get killed by means of felony exercise aren’t solely white individuals, the vast majority of them are black individuals”.

As Trump pressed the problem, Ramaphosa stayed calm – and tried to work his appeal by making a joke about providing a aircraft to the US.

He invoked the identify of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, saying South Africa remained dedicated to racial reconciliation.

When a journalist requested what would occur if white farmers left South Africa, Ramaphosa deflected the query to his white agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, who stated that almost all farmers wished to remain.

However Trump stored firing salvoes at Ramaphosa, who averted coming into right into a shouting match with him – one thing that occurred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he met Trump in the identical room in February.

Earlier this month, a gaggle of 59 white South Africans arrived within the US, the place they have been granted refugee standing. Ramaphosa stated on the time they have been “cowards”.

Earlier than Wednesday’s White Home assembly, South Africa’s chief had careworn that bettering commerce relations with the US was his precedence.

South African exports into the US face a 30% tariff as soon as a pause on Trump’s new import taxes ends in July.

Tensions between South Africa and the US ramped up days after Trump took workplace for his second time period in January.

It was at that time that Ramaphosa signed into regulation a controversial invoice permitting South Africa’s authorities to expropriate privately owned land with out compensation in sure circumstances, when it’s deemed “equitable and within the public curiosity”.

This solely served to tarnish the picture of Africa’s greatest financial system within the eyes of the Trump administration – already angered by its genocide case in opposition to Israel on the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice.

In February, the US president introduced the suspension of essential help to South Africa and supplied to permit members of the Afrikaner neighborhood – who’re principally white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers – to settle within the US as refugees.

South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was additionally expelled in March after accusing Trump of “mobilising a supremacism” and attempting to “challenge white victimhood as a canine whistle”.

Further reporting by Khanyisile Ngcobo and Farouk Chothia