Trump hosts Ramaphosa as South African leader looks to salvage relationship
The bilateral relationship is at its lowest point since South Africa enforced its apartheid system of racial segregation, which ended in 1994.
President Donald Trump is hosting South African president Cyril Ramaphosa for White House talks at a moment when relations between the two countries are strained.
Mr Trump has been attacking South African officials on widely rejected charges of allowing a “genocide” against minority white farmers.
South African officials have strongly pushed back against Mr Trump’s accusation and Mr 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.
Mr Ramaphosa was greeted by Mr Trump as he arrived at the White House shortly after noon for a lunch and Oval Office talks.
Mr Trump has cut all US assistance to South Africa and welcomed several dozen white South African farmers to the US as refugees.
He has launched a series of accusations at South Africa’s black-led government, including that it is seizing land from white farmers, enforcing anti-white policies and pursuing an anti-American foreign policy.
Mr Trump issued an executive order in February cutting all funding to South Africa over some of its domestic and foreign policies.
The order criticised the South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.
In advance of the meeting, a White House official said Mr Trump’s topics of discussion with Mr Ramaphosa were likely to include the need to condemn politicians who “promote genocidal rhetoric” and to classify farm attacks as a priority crime.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning, said Mr Trump also was likely to raise South African race-based barriers to trade and the need to “stop scaring off investors”.
Mr Trump falsely accused the South African government of a rights violation against white Afrikaner farmers by seizing their land through a new expropriation law.
No land has been seized and the South African government has pushed back, saying US criticism is driven by misinformation.
The Trump administration’s references to the Afrikaner people — who are descendants of Dutch and other European settlers — have also elevated previous claims made by Mr Trump’s South African-born adviser Elon Musk and some conservative US commentators that the South African government is allowing attacks on white farmers in what amounts to a genocide.
That has been disputed by experts in South Africa, who say there is no evidence of whites being targeted, although farmers of all races are victims of violent home invasions in a country that suffers from a very high crime rate.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio on Tuesday said Mr Trump remains ready to “reset” relations with South Africa, but noted that the administration’s concerns about South African policies cut even deeper then the concerns about white farmers.
South Africa has also angered the Trump White House over its move to bring charges at the International Court of Justice accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Mr Ramaphosa has also faced scrutiny in Washington for his past connections to MTN Group, Iran’s second-largest telecom provider. It owns nearly half of Irancell, a joint venture linked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Mr Ramaphosa served as board chair of MTN from 2002 to 2013.
“When one country is consistently unaligned with the United States on issue after issue after issue after issue, now you become – you have to make conclusions about it,” Mr Rubio told Senate Foreign Relation Committee members at a Tuesday hearing.
With the deep differences, Mr Ramaphosa appeared to be taking steps to avoid the sort of contentious engagement that Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky experienced during his late February Oval Office visit, when the Ukrainian leader found himself being berated by Mr Trump and vice president JD Vance.
Mr Musk is also expected to attend Wednesday’s talks.
Mr Musk has been at the forefront of the criticism of his homeland, casting its affirmative action laws as racist against whites.
Mr Musk has said on social media that his Starlink satellite internet service is not able to get a licence to operate in South Africa because he is not black.
South African authorities say Starlink has not formally applied. It can, but it would be bound by affirmative action laws in the communications sector that require foreign companies to allow 30% of their South African subsidiaries to be owned by shareholders who are black or from other racial groups disadvantaged under apartheid.
The South African government says its long-standing affirmative action laws are a cornerstone of its efforts to right the injustices of the white minority rule of apartheid, which denied opportunities to blacks and other racial groups.
