Trump exhibits South African president video of memorial to useless
‘We have got cope with the previous,’ South African President Ramaphosa tells Trump on land seizures
In a tense Oval Workplace assembly on Wednesday, President Donald Trump straight challenged South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on allegations of genocide and violence in opposition to white farmers.
Initially framed as a bilateral summit on commerce and different issues, the assembly turned heated after a member of the White Home press pool requested Ramaphosa in regards to the president’s claims of genocide in opposition to Afrikaners, who’re largely descendants of Dutch arrivals who started arriving on the Cape of Good Hope Colony in 1652.
A reporter requested, “Mr. President, what is going to it take so that you can be satisfied there’s no white genocide in South Africa?”
Get Our Newest Information for FREE
Subscribe to get each day/weekly electronic mail with the highest tales (plus particular affords!) from The Christian Publish. Be the primary to know.
“It can take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, a few of whom are his good buddies, like those that are right here,” responded Ramaphosa, who gestured towards South African golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, who accompanied him to the White Home. “… It can take President Trump to take heed to them. I cannot be repeating what I have been saying.”
He continued, “I’d say if there was Afrikan genocide, I can wager you these three gents wouldn’t be right here, together with my minister of agriculture. He wouldn’t be with me. So it should take him, President Trump, listening to their tales, to their perspective. That’s the reply to your query.”
Trump then requested an aide to usher in printed-out articles documenting what the president referred to as “1000’s of tales” about Afrikaners being killed and requested aides to dim the lights within the Oval Workplace as a video started to play exhibiting footage of South Africa’s Financial Freedom Fighters (EFF) get together singing the apartheid-era “Shoot the Boer” tune — with lyrics which embrace “kill the Boer, kill the white farmer” — in entrance of an enormous crowd.
Trump later remarked, “That man is touring throughout South Africa, and it’s not a small get together. It was a stadium holding 100 thousand folks with hardly an empty seat. That’s vital illustration.”
???? JUST SHOWN IN THE OVAL OFFICE: Proof of Persecution in South Africa. pic.twitter.com/rER1l8sqAU
— The White Home (@WhiteHouse) Could 21, 2025
Because the video performed, Ramaphosa and two members of his delegation appeared disinterested and didn’t watch the footage. As Trump narrated a portion of the video exhibiting an extended row of crosses displayed alongside a street and automobiles stopped for passengers to exit to pay their respects to the useless, Ramaphosa and the delegation turned within the path of the monitor.
“These crosses characterize useless white folks, largely white farmers,” Trump stated, later including, “Every white cross, roughly one thousand of them, represents a white farmer or their member of the family who was killed. The automobiles are stopped to honor them, and it’s a horrible sight. I’ve by no means seen something prefer it, with crosses lining each side of the street for all these individuals who have been killed.”
When an NBC Information reporter interjected with an off-topic query in regards to the Qatari jet gifted to the Trump administration this week, the president dismissed the query, calling the questioner a “horrible reporter.” Minutes later, Trump appeared extra conciliatory towards Ramaphosa.
“I do not need you to look unhealthy,” stated the president. “However we’ve lots of of individuals, 1000’s of individuals attempting to return into our nation as a result of they really feel they will be killed, and their land goes to be confiscated. And also you do have legal guidelines that have been handed that provides you the best to confiscate land for no cost. You possibly can take away land for no cost.”
In response, Ramaphosa underscored his nation’s constitutional protections, but in addition referred to what he referred to as the necessity to “cope with the previous.” “Our structure ensures and protects the sanctity of tenure of land possession, and that structure protects all South Africans with regard to land possession,” he stated. “Nevertheless, we do say, as a result of we have got to cope with the previous, the federal government, and as your authorities additionally has the best to expropriate land for public use … we have by no means actually gotten underway with that, and we’re going to be doing that.”
Trump then appeared to accuse Ramaphosa of confiscating land from farmers on the premise of their race. “You are taking folks’s land away … and people folks, in lots of instances, are being executed,” he stated. “They’re being executed, they usually occur to be white, and most of them occur to be farmers, and that is a tricky scenario.”
He additionally accused the media of ignoring the plight of Afrikaners, including, “We now have a really corrupt media that will not even report this. If this have been the opposite method round, it might be the most important story. Apartheid was horrible and reported on a regular basis as the most important menace. What’s taking place now, type of the other of apartheid, is rarely reported, and no person is aware of about it.
“All we all know is we’re being inundated with white farmers from South Africa, and it is a large drawback.”
Rigidity between Trump and South African leaders isn’t totally new: throughout his first time period in 2018, Trump was criticized by the South African authorities after posting in regards to the “massive scale killing of farmers” and requested then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “carefully examine” whether or not farmers’ land was being improperly seized following a Fox Information report.
In keeping with the BBC, 1000’s of white farmers have been compelled “usually violently” from their land between 2000 and 2001 in a marketing campaign aimed toward righting what the outlet referred to as “colonial-era land grabs” by Dutch, British and German nationals. Beneath this system, about 4,000 white farmers had their land seized by the federal government and given to black Zimbabweans, the BBC reported.
Whereas crime information in South Africa is notoriously unreliable, information shops have estimated numbers within the dozens of white farmers killed during the last yr, with The Related Press reporting 12 farm murders, in contrast with a PBS report of roughly 50 farm murders yearly.
In February, the Trump administration labeled Afrikaners as refugees following an government order and accused the South African authorities of passing a regulation permitting for the seizure of their agricultural properties with out correct compensation.
The announcement drew pushback from some Christian refugee advocates who’ve criticized the Trump administration for halting the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and leaving tens of 1000’s of refugees from different nations already authorised to resettle within the U.S. in limbo.
