The conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office Wednesday was meant to smooth over tensions between the two leaders’ countries.
It appeared to begin cordially enough. Ramaphosa thanked Trump for providing his country with respirators during the COVID-19 pandemic, introduced some of South Africa’s famous golfers, and presented Trump with a book on his beloved pastime.
But then the meeting took an unexpected turn when a member of the press asked Trump, “What will it take for you to be convinced that there’s no white genocide in South Africa?” After Ramaphosa spoke briefly about the allegation, Trump asked his staff to dim the lights and played a video montage that he claimed showed evidence of this alleged persecution.
Ramaphosa and several reports have long challenged and discredited these claims, but it follows the administration’s decision to welcome around sixty white Afrikaners from South Africa who U.S. officials claim faced “racial discrimination” in their native country.
Despite the dramatic screening, Ramaphosa appeared to remain calm in the Oval Office. He later called the visit a success for achieving “reengagement” with the United States after months of rocky relations. The South African president had reportedly intended to address trade issues and other tensions between his country and the United States, such as the soon-to-expire Africa Growth and Opportunity (AGOA) pact and the U.S. plan to impose a 30 percent tariff on South Africa.
CFR asked Africa Senior Fellow Michelle Gavin to help explain the meeting and how it could affect the two countries’ relationship.
The U.S.-South Africa meeting occurred at a contentious time for the two countries, as you wrote about in the lead-up to the talks. Why were tensions so high?
Even before President Trump took office for the second time, the U.S.-South Africa relationship was really in trouble. There had been a lot of bipartisan concern in Congress about South Africa’s relationship with Russia and China, its stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its enthusiasm for BRICS as essentially an anti-Western bloc looking to reform the global international architecture.
There have also long been frustrations between the United States and South Africa about South Africa’s unwillingness to speak out about abuses, particularly of civil and political rights in its region, training Chinese pilots on South African territory, and just a number of irritants that had soured the bilateral relationship.
Then, President Trump, very early in his tenure, seemed not only very focused on South Africa, but particularly on this idea that white South Africans are persecuted and even the victims of a genocidal campaign. So we’ve seen a flurry of activity from the Trump administration, including an executive order banning assistance to South Africa and South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S. being declared persona non grata and sent back home.
What was Ramaphosa’s expectation going into the White House meeting?
The tariff conversation has alarmed South Africans, because Trump’s proposed a 30 percent tariff on South African goods, and appears to have no interest in renewing the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which South Africa has taken advantage of. So there’s this range of actions, and then statements about the expropriation act that South Africa passed, which has been kind of mischaracterized by the Trump administration as a vehicle by which people’s land is being stolen from them, that was on Ramaphosa’s mind going into the talks.
Trump surprised Ramaphosa with a video that he alleged showed white South Africans being victims of a “genocide.” Reporting indicates these allegations are false. Given all the other issues, why was this such a focus for the president?
That’s a really good question. What was that performance for? Who was it for? Who was the intended audience? Because I don’t think it was the South African delegation in the room.
It appears that the Trump administration sees this bilateral relationship as a venue for signaling the parts of its constituency that are focused on the persecution of white Christians, as opposed to a relationship about finding mutual areas of interest and ambitions to work with the South Africans to find a way to manage these significant areas of disagreement.
What is the situation in South Africa? Is there a basis for the claim that white South Africans face persecution there?
South Africa is an extremely violent place. There is a lot of violent crime that touches all South Africans, so that is absolutely an issue, and you heard the South African delegation acknowledge this.
But it’s also the case that the small white minority in South Africa continues to own the majority of privately held land in the country and continues to have an average income significantly higher than the average income of other South Africans.
So the idea that this is a persecuted class of people doesn’t really seem to be substantiated by the facts. Now, can you find racists in South African society? Of course you can, just like you can in ours. But is this a case of genocide? Or a sort of state-sponsored persecution? Clearly not.
If you read the South African press, there is a lot of anger, kind of gallows humor, and frustration that this fringe narrative has taken hold in a place like the Oval Office. Definitely, there are some voices suggesting, “Well, forget it. Forget about this bilateral relationship. Let’s just double down with other partners and move forward.”
This meeting follows the arrival of Afrikaner refugees to the United States. How does their arrival reflect the administration’s changes to the U.S. refugee programs?
There are refugees who’ve been vetted and were ready to come, and they’re not being allowed to proceed. It says that there’s a certain class of people the administration is willing to embrace, and there are an awful lot of people they are not, and it’s impossible not to see the race dynamics at play here. There’s genocide occurring in Sudan, but we’re not bringing Sudanese refugees. We’re bringing white South Africans.
Ramaphosa received some praise for how he handled the meeting’s unexpected turn. What did South Africans have to say about it and how does it affect domestic politics there?
South Africa, like many African societies, confronts a huge job creation challenge, and a soured relationship with the United States would mean losing jobs rather than gaining them. Overall, the African National Congress, the party which has dominated South Africa since liberation, wishes to pursue a non-aligned foreign policy, so they don’t want to be at odds with any major power.
So you have these different strands running, unsurprisingly, through a democratic society like South Africa, but very few South Africans were pleased with the way President Ramaphosa was received at the meeting.
Theatrics aside, did anything substantive come out of the meeting?
There’s some reporting today that suggests discussions around some kind of reciprocal trade arrangement were held, so that seems good. If this is going to be an ongoing discussion to try to find a mutually agreeable framework for trade going forward, it, hopefully, is a work in progress.
But I can’t really assess the seriousness of it because it was a private conversation. One hopes that those were more substantive and focused on their very real issues in a bilateral relationship. The Trump administration has indicated that they’re interested in commercial diplomacy and in trade and investment, but it’s hard to argue for investment in a country that you just accused of a genocidal campaign. So, the notion of private business versus public messaging being at odds, I don’t think really works.
What’s next for the two countries?
I don’t think anything that occurred yesterday changes the fact that we do have these very real areas of disagreement, and some shared interests in deepening mutually beneficial commercial ties and access to critical minerals. If one is allowed to acknowledge the reality of climate change, working with the South Africans on the Just Energy Transition Partnership that was to be focused there—that we pulled out of—would be a priority.
So I don’t think anything has changed, except this set of examples we’ve just handed to the Chinese and others to make their case that the United States is a problematic power unwilling to engage with the countries of the Global South in a serious way.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It represents the views and opinions solely of the fellow. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
