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President Trump put South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on the spot Wednesday by screening a video of Black leaders calling for White Afrikaner farmers to be killed, an eyebrow-raising presentation that forced the visiting dignitary to answer for reports of genocide in his country.
Mr. Ramaphosa was caught by surprise during a visit he said he hoped would “reset the strategic relationship between the two countries.”
Mr. Trump has given credence to reports of atrocities against Afrikaners, canceled U.S. aid to South Africa and offered asylum to White farmers. He refused to allow Mr. Ramaphosa to gloss over the issue when they met in front of TV cameras in the Oval Office.
“We have thousands of stories talking about it, and we have documentaries. We have news stories,” Mr. Trump said. “I could show you a couple of things and … it has to be responded to.”
He had the lights in the Oval Office dimmed as the video played on a large screen.
The footage shown to the South African delegation, the White House press corps and the world featured clips of Julius Malema, an opposition politician who founded the Economic Freedom Fighters.
In one of the clips, Mr. Malema tells a crowd that they “must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolutional act.” In other clips, Mr. Malema sings the anti-apartheid “Kill the Boer” song.
A boer refers to the Afrikaners.
Another part of the video showed aerial footage of miles of white crosses lining a road. Mr. Trump pointed it out to the South African president: “These are burial sites, right here.”
Mr. Ramaphosa, who appeared to avoid looking at the TV screen, reacted with shock as he turned to see what Mr. Trump was pointing out.
“I’d like to know where that is because this I’ve never seen,” he said. “We need to find out.”
The footage, however, was actually of the Witkruis Monument, a complex on private property featuring white crosses representing the victims of farm attacks.
Mr. Trump handed the president printed articles, which he said were from the past few days. He said each page in the roughly 4-inch stack was a report of the killing of a White person in South Africa.
The contentious meeting may have damaged Mr. Ramaphosa’s political standing at home. He badly needed a solid discussion on trade with the U.S., his nation’s top trading partner, to soothe jitters about South Africa’s economy. South Africa is battling high unemployment, tremendous income inequality and sluggish economic growth, and has lost its foreign assistance from the United States. The country doesn’t have the money to cover the $430 million shortfall caused by the Trump administration’s cuts in aid, the country’s finance minister said Wednesday.
Before Mr. Ramaphosa’s arrival in Washington, his political rivals labeled the trip a fool’s errand. They warned that Mr. Ramaphosa would return empty-handed and look weak on the world stage if the meeting devolved similarly to Mr. Trump’s fiery meeting this year with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“The video was definitely a mic drop moment for Trump. It is unprecedented to be showing footage like that in that setting,” said Elaine Dezenski, senior director and head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center for Economic and Financial Power.
“I don’t know how this is going to play domestically for Ramaphosa because I’m not sure he’s coming back with anything concrete, and I think it was difficult for him to formulate a response to the video with the way Trump used it as a cudgel,” she said.
The spectacle in the Oval Office drew criticism from Mr. Malema, the opposition politician featured in the video.
“A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me,” he said on social media. “No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about White genocide. We will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency.”
Mr. Trump has previously spoken about reports of a “White genocide” in South Africa. He granted refugee status to the White minority Afrikaners fleeing South Africa. The first group arrived this month.
Regardless of whether it qualifies as genocide, there is no doubt that people are being killed on South African farms.
An estimated 225 people were killed on South African farms in four years ending in 2024, and nearly half of them were Black workers living on farms, The New York Times reported.
AfriForum, a minority rights organization for Afrikaners, recorded 40 deaths in farm attacks in 2023 and 50 in 2022.
The South African officials in the Oval Office denied that the violence amounted to genocide. Mr. Ramaphosa said the speeches in the videos were “not government policy.”
When Mr. Trump asked about the killings of the White farmers, Mr. Ramaphosa said those killed through criminal activity were not only White but also Black.
“The farmers are not Black. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but the farmers are not Black,” Mr. Trump said.
The government has said any claims of persecution against White Afrikaners are “completely false.”
“The South African Police Services statistics on farm-related crimes do not support allegations of violent crime targeted at farmers generally or any particular race,” the South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement.
“There are sufficient structures available within South Africa to address concerns of discrimination. Moreover, even if there are allegations of discrimination, it is our view that these do not meet the threshold of persecution required under domestic and international refugee law,” the ministry said.
Mr. Trump takes issue with the Expropriation Act, which Mr. Ramaphosa signed in January. He cited the law when he signed an executive order in February suspending U.S. foreign assistance to South Africa.
The law makes it easier for land to be expropriated in the public interest, making Afrikaner farmers fearful of losing their land.
The Afrikaners are an ethnic group descended from colonial-era Dutch and German settlers in South Africa, a group distinct from the English-speaking Whites, such as Trump ally Elon Musk, who was present in the room and has spoken out about South Africa. The Afrikaners were the driving force behind the apartheid system of racial segregation that reigned in the country in the mid- and late 20th century.
South Africa’s Black-majority government passed the Expropriation Act in response to land-distribution inequalities left over from apartheid. White South Africans make up around 7% of the country’s population but own more than three-quarters of the private farmland in the country.
South Africa’s minister of agriculture, John Steenhuisen, acknowledged a “rural safety problem in South Africa. I don’t think anyone wants to candy coat that.”
After talking with farmers, he said, the majority “really do want to stay in South Africa and make it work.”
He said the government wants the U.S. and other allies to help expand the South African economy and “shut the door forever” on the rebel groups like those in the video.
Mr. Ramaphosa said the country denounces the language and violence. “Oh, yes. We’ve always done so,” he said.
Johann Rupert, a White South African billionaire at the Oval Office meeting, pleaded for help for the police, including drones and Starlink, the satellite-based, high-speed internet service owned by Mr. Musk.
Mr. Rupert said the crime in South Africa targets both Blacks and Whites.
“We have too many deaths, but it’s across the board, it’s not only White farmers,” he said. “We need technology help.”
Golfer Retief Goosen talked about his family’s farm, stolen equipment, living behind electric fences, and an attack on his mother.
“They’re trying to burn the farms down to chase you away, so it is a concern to try and make a living as a farmer, and at the end of the day, without farmers, there’s no food on the plate. So we need the farmers to produce the food,” he said.
When asked by a reporter what he would like Mr. Ramaphosa to do about the situation, Mr. Trump sternly said, “I don’t know.”
He said he had not determined whether genocide was occurring.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” he said. “I hate to see it.”
“If I can save lives, I want to save the lives,” he said. “If it’s in Africa, that’s great. If it’s in Europe, if it’s — wherever it may be.”
After the meeting, Mr. Ramaphosa said his visit “went very well.”
• Jeff Mordock contributed to this report.
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