President Trump asked an aide to dim the lights of the Oval Office, and then, with a line of reporters in the room, ambushed the leader of South Africa.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation watched in stunned silence at footage that Trump believed supported his claims that Ramaphosa’s government was turning a blind eye to violence against white Afrikaners. When Trump identified images of crosses along a road as the marked graves of murdered white farmers, Ramaphosa said he hadn’t seen that before and would find out where it was filmed. The video also showed South African opposition leaders calling for the death of white farmers. Ramaphosa said he condemned those remarks and his political coalition had been built to sideline those calling for violence.
It was another tense confrontation between Trump and a U.S. ally, staged by the White House to air out those tensions in front of the world. Trump flipped through what he said were printed news articles about white farmers being killed. “Those people in many cases are being executed—they happen to be white and most of them happen to be farmers,” Trump said.
President Ramaphosa said that there is a lot of violent crime in the country but Black and white citizens are both targets. “There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed unfortunately through criminal activity are not only white people,” Ramaphosa told Trump.
Read more: U.S.-South African Tensions Explained
Ramaphosa repeatedly tried to steer the conversation to safer ground. He told Trump that South Africa offered many opportunities to trade minerals needed to boost American manufacturing. He thanked Trump for agreeing to send South Africa respirators during the COVID-19 pandemic. He praised Trump’s efforts to negotiate peace agreements in places like Ukraine, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ramaphosa’s overtures began with an appeal to Trump’s love of golf, saying he gave him a “really fantastic” 30-pound book of photographs of South Africa’s golf courses. Ramaphosa said he’d “started practicing golf” and is ready to play with Trump. He also brought two legendary South African golfers—Ernie Els and Retief Goosen—into the Oval Office with him to speak with Trump.
Ramaphosa’s visit comes at a moment of high tension between South Africa and the Trump Administration. Earlier this month, Trump offered refugee status to 59 white South Africans who Trump claimed were being targeted for violence. The South African government has also been a vocal defender of Palestinians in Gaza seeing their homes destroyed and access to food cut off by the Israeli military, a position that’s frustrated Trump administration officials.
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