President Donald Trump has hosted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa for White House talks Wednesday at a moment when relations between the two countries is seriously strained, with Trump laying into South African officials on widely rejected charges of allowing a “genocide” against minority white farmers.
But despite strong invectives, President Ramaphosa remained unmoved and unbothered and South African officials have strongly pushed back against Trump’s accusation and Ramaphosa sought the meeting to set the record straight and salvage his country’s relationship with the United States. The bilateral relationship is at its lowest point since South Africa enforced its apartheid system of racial segregation, which ended in 1994.
Despite tensions, South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa’s purpose was to visit the White House to cement ties over trade, amid the fiasco generated over land ownership in the “Rainbow Country,”.
The South African President, Rama thanked Trump for the meeting and hoped the relationship between both countries continue for the better.
Trump responded in kind but ambushed Rama by asking him to react to videos from South Africans persecuting and threatening white farmers.
The US President told aides to dim the light and play the video, also showing the South African President photographs of white farmers attacked in his country, urging him to respond to them. Trump stressed the world was quiet because it was Blacks against Whites, “on the other way around, it will have been called apartheid, though terrible, but that’s what it will have been called”
Trump turned it to a question-and-answer session, asking if whites felt safe in South Africa. But Rama insisted in the affirmative adding that Trump’s videos were not evidence of genocide.
Commentators say “South Africa’s President handled him very well, he wanted to do the Zelenskyy on them but South Africa’s man presented facts to him , he couldn’t come back with his fiction propaganda. I hope they dnt make a deal to withdraw from the Israel case. All Trump showed is Malema singing and cars of whites farmers during the Zuma must fall nation wide shut down. Rupert calling the illegal foreigners in South Africa “aliens “ cheered Donald Trump.
Since the meeting ended the international media reports have remained in favour of President Ramaphosa whose courage is widely acknowledged.