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Donald Trump attacked South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over his country’s treatment of white farmers at a televised White House meeting on Wednesday that deepened a crisis in relations between the two countries.
“We have hundreds of people, thousands of people, trying to come into our country because they fear they’re going to be killed, and their land is going to be confiscated,” Trump told Ramaphosa in the Oval Office.
“You do have laws that were passed that give you the right to confiscate land for no payment, you can take away land for no payment,” he went on.
Trump at one point took the unprecedented step of projecting newsreel reports on to video screens on the wall of the Oval Office, purporting to show violence against white farmers, with a startled Ramaphosa sitting silently by his side.
The episode had echoes of the extraordinary Oval Office showdown in the in February, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was berated by Trump and vice-president JD Vance before the world’s media.
The object of Trump’s anger is a South African land reform law which seeks to redress the injustices of apartheid and has triggered a conspiracy theory on the American right that white people in South Africa face “genocide”.
Washington is also angry at the genocide case South Africa has spearheaded at the International Court of Justice against Israel over its actions in Gaza.
Since he took office in January, Trump has cut aid to the country, expelled its ambassador and threatened to boycott this year’s G20 summit, which Pretoria is hosting.
He has also offered asylum to a number of white Afrikaner families who claim to be the victim of racial discrimination.
Pretoria says the claim that the government is seizing land from white farmers and fuelling violence against white landowners is inaccurate and “fails to recognise South Africa’s profound and painful history”.
In the run-up to the meeting in Washington, Ramaphosa prepared to offer concessions to the US such as allowing the country preferential access to mineral resources and gas deposits, and opening up South Africa’s markets to American agricultural companies.
Pretoria was also considering a compromise to allow South African-born Elon Musk, an outspoken critic of Ramaphosa’s government who was present in the Oval Office, to operate his Starlink satellite internet service in the country.
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