The US President, Donald Trump welcomed South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House for talks amidst strained relations between the two nations.
Following Trump's accusations, the South African government has vehemently denied the accusations and Ramaphosa sought a meeting with the US president to clear the air and improve bilateral ties, which have deteriorated significantly.
Recall that in February, Trump issued an executive order cutting all US funding to South Africa, citing concerns over its domestic policies, including alleged anti-white bias, and its relations with countries like Iran.
Trump has suspended all US aid to South Africa and offered refuge to dozens of white South African farmers, escalating tensions between the two nations.
Ahead of the meeting, a White House official reported Trump’s topics of discussion with 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 Trump also was likely to raise South African race-based barriers to trade and the need to “stop scaring off investors.”
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 U.S. criticism is driven by misinformation.
The Trump administration's focus on Afrikaners has intensified scrutiny of South Africa's government, with Elon Musk and conservative US commentators accusing the government of allowing genocide against 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. 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. 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,” Rubio told Senate Foreign Relation Committee members at a Tuesday hearing.
With the deep differences, Ramaphosa appeared to be taking steps to avoid the sort of contentious engagement that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy experienced during his late February Oval Office visit, when the Ukrainian leader found himself being berated by Trump and Vice President JD Vance. That disastrous meeting with White House officials asking Zelenskyy and his delegation to leave the White House grounds.
The South African president's delegation was expected to include golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen in his delegation, a gesture to the golf obsessed U.S. president. Luxury goods tycoon and Afrikaner Johann Rupert was also included as part of the delegation to help ease Trump's concerns about land being seized from white farmers.
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