Trump Pushes False ‘White Genocide’ Claims in Tense Meeting With South African Leaders – TIME 22-05-2025

Trump Pushes False White Genocide Claims Tense Meeting South African Leaders Report TIME visit President Cyril Ramaphosa White House screenshot

“Trump Pushes False ‘White Genocide’ Claims in Tense Meeting With South African Leaders

by
Brian Bennett
Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.

President Trump asked an aide to dim the lights of the Oval Office, and then, with a line of reporters in the room, proceeded to ambush the leader of South Africa.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation watched in stunned silence at footage that Trump believed supported his claims that Ramaphosa’s government was turning a blind eye to violence against white Afrikaners. When Trump identified images of crosses along a road as the marked graves of murdered white farmers, Ramaphosa said he hadn’t seen that before and would find out where it was filmed. The video also showed South African opposition leaders calling for the death of white farmers. Ramaphosa said he condemned those remarks and his political coalition had been built to sideline those calling for violence.

It was another tense confrontation between Trump and a U.S. ally, staged by the White House to air out those tensions in front of the world. Trump flipped through what he said were printed news articles about white farmers being killed. “Those people in many cases are being executed—they happen to be white and most of them happen to be farmers,” Trump said.

President Ramaphosa said that there is a lot of violent crime in the country but Black and white citizens are both targets. “There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed unfortunately through criminal activity are not only white people,” Ramaphosa told Trump.

[…]

Ramaphosa’s visit comes at a moment of high tension between South Africa and the Trump Administration. Earlier this month, Trump offered refugee status to 59 white South Africans who Trump claimed were being targeted for violence.

The South African government has also been a vocal defender of Palestinians in Gaza who have seen their homes destroyed and access to food cut off by the Israeli military, a position that’s frustrated Trump administration officials. In December, South Africa filed a case with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of “genocidal acts” in Gaza. Israel rejected the allegations as “baseless.”

[…]

The atmosphere in the room shifted when a reporter asked Trump what it would take for him to be convinced that there is not a genocide against white South Africans. Ramaphosa jumped in to answer the question. ““It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africa—some of them are his friends,” the South African president said. Ramaphosa said. “If there was genocide against Afrikaners, Ramaphosa said, these gentlemen would not be here,” he said, gesturing to Ells, Goosen, Rupert and John Steenhuisen, South Africa’s Agriculture Minister. “That is the answer.”

That’s when Trump called for an aide to bring to him a stack of articles about violent attacks on white farmers and dim the lights to bring the room’s attention to a large flat screen TV set up along a wall of the Oval Office. Trump played a five-minute video that claimed to show evidence of the murders of white farmers and South African politicians calling for racial violence. Elon Musk, who has repeatedly posted on his social media platform, X, false claims of genocide against white South Africans, was standing on the side of the room and watched the video intently.

[…]

Over the next 20 minutes, Ramaphosa, as well as others in the delegation—Rupert, Steenhuisen and Zingiswa Losi, trade union leader—made efforts to convince Trump that the information he had been given was inaccurate or misleading. They pressed upon him that South Africa has issues with violence against both white and Black people, and that the idea that the government is responsible for these murders is simply false. At one point, champion golfer Els pulled out his passport and said he is a “proud South African” who wants to see his country “flourish.”

[…]

Toward the end of the hour-long exchange, Trump was asked about whether he’d changed his mind about whether white farmers were being targeted for genocide in the country. “I haven’t made up my mind,” Trump said.

[…]

As President Ramaphosa walked between the high columns of the White House’s North Portico a reporter asked if he thought Trump “heard” him in the meetings. “Yes he did, it went very well.””