May 22, 2025
The meeting came weeks after the U.S. admitted white South African refugees – while shipping refugees of other ethnicities out.
Things took a familiar wrong turn as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa sat calmly while President Donald Trump pushed false claims of “white genocide” during an Oval Office meeting, NBC News reported.
Ramaphosa kept his cool while calling Trump out on the U.S. decision to admit only white South Africans as refugees while pushing against immigrants from other countries. The 47th president baselessly pushed a narrative of genocide against white people in South Africa, which Ramaphosa and other South African leaders have denied. Ramaphosa took the time to calmly school Trump on people who may have been killed, and how they are not only white. “The people who do get killed, unfortunately through criminality, are not only white people,” he said.
Trump’s claims have been supported by DOGE director and Tesla founder Elon Musk, whose feelings about the country’s racial equity laws resulted in the U.S. admitting white South African refugees — while shipping refugees of other ethnicities out.
Musk was present for the meeting, along with Vice President JD Vance, and other members of the Trump cabinet. Collectively, Trump and the X owner forced Ramaphosa and other South African leaders and reporters present to watch a montage of clips, including videos of people allegedly discussing “cutting the throat” and shooting white people.
While Ramaphosa denounced the language heard in the clips, saying it’s “not government policy,” the country’s minister of agriculture said that multiple people included in the montage were members of minority parties that are not in the country’s ruling coalition. “We have a multiparty democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves,” the minister said.
The tense engagement was compared to that of a February 2025 meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where Trump and Vance attacked him over the war. However, South African leaders and reporters had mixed reviews, some praising Ramaphosa, who is a protege of Nelson Mandela, for staying calm under increased pressure, but others wanted more.
According to NPR, Ramaphosa himself was preparing for the worst. “I know that many South Africans were filled with concern and fear that we will have a ‘Z’ moment,” the president said during a press briefing. “And all that did not ensue.”
He seemingly apologized to South African reporters who had traveled to Washington, D.C., to witness some drama but received the opposite. One reporter claimed to be satisfied with the dramatics, while another said Ramaphosa deserved a drink.
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