After a friendly introduction where Trump talked about South African golfers and Ramaphosa wanted to talk about trade agreements, everything turned around.
One of the reporters in the Oval Office asked Trump what it would take for him to back down from his previous statements that there was “a genocide of whites in South Africa.”
Ramaphosa replied that it would take “Trump listening to South African voices.”
The American president responded – with a prepared video.
– Excuse me, can we see the articles, turn off the lights and show this, it’s right behind you, Trump said as a video began to play behind Ramaphosa.
“Shoot to kill,” the man in the video says. Photo: Evan Vucci / AP
Ambushed
The video, which The New York Times calls “a stunning ambush,” showed what Trump said were “mass graves” where thousands of white farmers had been buried.
– It’s a horrible sight. I have never seen anything like it, the president said next to his astonished South African colleague.
Ramaphosa said he had not seen the images before and questioned whether they were even taken in South Africa.
Trump also showed images of a man urging people to “kill the Boers.”
“Shoot to kill,” the man says in what appears to be a meeting of sorts.
“Death, death, death”
Boer was the term for the first white settlers in South Africa. Their descendants are now called Afrikaners.
That was the group that ruled South Africa during the racist apartheid regime.
“We have a multi-party democracy in South Africa where people have the right to express themselves,” Ramaphosa said.
“Our government is completely against what he is saying.”
Trump’s meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa degenerated. Photo: Evan Vucci / AP
Trump had more than just the video. The president also produced a stack of newspaper articles that he said showed “thousands” of cases of racist persecution of whites in South Africa.
– Death, death, death, Trump said as he flipped through the stack.
Granting asylum to whites
Ramaphosa said that there is crime in South Africa, but that the majority of crime victims in the country are black.
– Farmers are not black, Trump interrupted.
He also said that white farmers are being “executed” after first having their property confiscated.
Ramaphosa said that is not true.
The background to the chaotic meeting is Trump’s repeated accusations that a genocide is taking place against whites in South Africa.
Last winter, he issued a presidential order stating that white South Africans have the right to asylum in the United States – despite the fact that his administration is simultaneously trying to reduce immigration to minimal levels.
Trump receives Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House. Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP
Can reclaim land
According to crime statistics in South Africa, whites are not subjected to deadly violence to a greater extent than other citizens, writes The New York Times.
South Africa has voted through a law that could give the state the right to reclaim some of the land that ended up in the possession of white families during apartheid, but so far no such confiscations have been carried out.
According to The New York Times, the South African delegation tried to explain the facts to the American president. But he would not listen.
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