It looked for a moment as though the South African president had avoided a trap. For weeks ahead of Cyril Ramaphosa’s White House visit, MAGA world had been promoting unsubstantiated claims about a hidden “white genocide” in the country. Donald Trump himself called it a “genocide,” as his administration officials greeted 59 white South Africans as “refugees” at the airport last Monday in D.C. So, Ramaphosa came prepared. He brought with him two of the president’s favorite golfers and a giant book about golf. His introductory remarks were a tour de force of diplomacy, and the meeting was on track to avoid the doomed fate of Volodymyr Zelensky’s in February.
Then, a voice from the back of the room sparked chaos. “What will it take for you to be convinced that there’s no white genocide in South Africa?” a reporter with a South African accent shouted. What followed was perhaps one of the most egregious demonstrations of whitesplaining in living memory. Trump, armed with printouts of tabloid news articles and a montage of video clips, channeling a terminally online and conspiracy theory-loving uncle at an uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner, launched into a meandering explanation of the current political situation in South Africa to its president.
“We have thousands of stories talking about it. We have documentaries, we have news stories,” Trump said, addressing his South African counterpart. “Turn the lights down,” he added, as the South African delegation’s eyes widened with horror. You can walk away from a difficult uncle when he tries to force you to watch YouTube videos about who really did 9/11. It’s harder when the difficult uncle is the most powerful man on the planet and the world’s press is filming you.
The lights of the Oval Office indeed dimmed, and Ramaphosa was forced to watch a series of out-of-context clips seemingly cobbled together by a Trump administration staffer to show the “real” truth about what was happening in his own country. The video was not, as promised, a documentary. Instead, the clips consisted largely of opposition and extremist political figures making incendiary statements calling for the killing of Afrikaners. In another dimension, a second-term president Joe Biden is sitting in Pretoria being forced to watch hours of Kathy Griffin’s stand up.
Ramaphosa kept his cool, even if he looked exasperated. He tried to interject, but was rebuffed by an entranced Trump, who also occasionally added commentary. “Now, this is very bad. These are burial sites right here. Burial sites of over 1000 white farmers,” he said. The South African contingent looked stunned, which makes sense since rather than being grave sites of murdered farmers, the mounds with crosses were actually part of a protest to stop the violence. As the video came to a close, an aide handed Trump a pile of printed-out articles from tabloid websites. “Look, these are articles over the last few days,” he said, rifling through them. “Death of people, death, death, death, horrible, death,” he continued. “This family was wiped out.”
Trump has the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world at his command, and could surely have produced a detailed and damning report on the alleged white genocide in South Africa and presented it to the world’s press. Instead, the print outs appeared more like the Facebook feed of someone in danger of ending up on an FBI watchlist. The meeting continued to go off the rails as Trump opined on the non-existent genocide to a room full of South Africans — Black and white — who were telling him it was not a thing. “This is sort of the opposite of apartheid,” Trump said.
He even invited the opinions of the South African golfers Ramaphosa had brought with him, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, who remained diplomatic. Remarkably, and against all odds, Ramaphosa was able to salvage the meeting, calmly responding to the most egregious of the claims made by Trump and his videos. “We have a multi-party democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves,” he said, explaining that none of the people in the video were members of his government. “Our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying.” Explaining that there is no evidence of white people being specifically targeted in South Africa, but that farmers of all races are victims of violent home invasions, would have taken a bit longer.
South African police data shows that 225 people were killed on farms in South Africa between April 2020 to March 2024 — but around half of those victims were current or former workers living on farms, who tend to be Black. Around 50 were farmers, who are usually white. By the end, Trump had been hit with so many contradictory facts from the South African delegation that he looked as though he was almost beginning to question his printouts. Either that or he was bored and wanted to return to his other favorite activity: calling the press incompetent idiots.
Ramaphosa played a smart game. It wasn’t just the golf diplomacy, although that certainly helped. He brought a skilled diplomatic team who had been prepped for a showdown. Among them was the country’s Minister for Agriculture, John Steenhuisen, a white man and a member of a rival party, who told Trump that South Africa had a rural crime problem, not a white genocide problem. Ramaphosa repeatedly invoked Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s history of racial peacemaking since apartheid.
By the end, the mood had lightened. Ramaphosa even had the poise to crack a joke. “I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” he said when Trump was in the middle of a rant about the media after being questioned on his new Qatari jet. If there was one saving grace from the blow up, it was that the biggest South African agitator in the room was kept from making things even worse. “Elon is from South Africa,” Trump said, referring to Elon Musk, who stood just to the side of the president in the Oval Office. “I don’t want to get Elon involved,” Trump said. “I don’t want to talk to him about that. I don’t think it’s fair to him.” Ramaphosa laughed. Finally, something they could agree on.
