Yves here. Yet another “I’m embarrassed to be an American” moment.
Trump has using his advantage of 14 years of practice as a reality TV star by putting leaders of other nations on the hot seat in the White House and holding impromptu press events. Except they aren’t that impropmtu. Here, Trump even had a video prepared, showing he had carefully clearly planned to make South Africa look bad. This is a bizarre tu quoque smear, as in the underlying charge is false, even before getting to the fact that tu quoque is a logical fallacy. But any cheap shot will do in trying to demean South Africa, which courageously filed the genocide action against Israel with the ICJ. Aside from marshaling the already-horrific evidence as of that date, the case made it acceptable to call the Israel savagery by its proper name, “genocide”.
Olivier Boyd-Barret points out that the US mainstream media is not buying what Trump was selling:
The Hill reports that Trump today used South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as his foil, basing his pro-Musk “evidence” on a video of incendiary remarks from South African politicians though not, as Trump falsely claimed, “officials.” The Associated Press has characterized any claim of “systematic” killings of white farmers in South Africa as “baseless.” Crime statistics for 2024 indicate that less than 1 percent of nationwide murders were on farms. Trump’s main beef, following the lead of Elon Musk (now racing home to Tesla-land to try and save his business empire from ultimate decimation by China) is recent passage of a law, still subject to judicial review, that enables expropriation of land. But the law is subject to judicial review, and is in any case quite comparable to U.S. federal government’s legal right to take over private property under eminent domain in the US.
Some additional reactions. Sam Husseini is less forgiving than the Common Dreams piece is below, in that he depicts South Africa President Rhamposa as too concerned about getting “deals” for South Africa, and thus not being willing to stand up to Trump. From his post, It Was No Ambush. Ramaphosa Failed to End the Appeasement of Imperial Israel, so He Got Hosed by Trump:
Outlets like Common Dreams and RT claim that Trump “ambushed” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa..
Baloney.
Trump didn’t sneak up on him as he walked out of his house. Ramaphosa walked into Trump’s office. Trump’s goals were clear. I wrote yesterday that he was pushing the phony “white genocide” narrative to:
- Retaliate against South Africa for going to the ICJ regarding the actual genocide in Gaza, to get them to back off more.
- Cheapen the public discourse over “genocide” — helping turn it into just another meaningless slur.
- Make it seem like Trump is standing up for alleged oppressed white folks, to play to some white working-class voters who don’t perceive that it’s actually — again — for Israel (similar to how they repackaged Palestine protests as an immigration issue).
- Push back against BRICS to the extent it’s challenging US establishment dominance, or appears to be doing so.
He lectured him on alleged abuses in South Africa and Ramaphosa was at best doing a diplomatic defense.
Ramaphosa should have been wagging his finger at Trump over a real, accelerating genocide in which Trump plays a central role — ISRAEL IS KILLING SCORES OF PEOPLE EVERY DAY — instead, he let Trump wag his finger at him about a fake one.
Larry Johnson is not as critical as Husseini is but concurs that Rhamposa could easily have rebutted the Trump smear and failed to. From his post:
Donald Trump put on a bizarre show trial today in the Oval Office, berating South African President Ramaphosa for allowing genocide in South Africa. The Washington Post reports:
…..Trump amplified false claims that White Afrikaners have been victims of a genocide, even showing video of crosses and earthen mounds that he said represented more than 1,000 grave sites of murdered farmers. The mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence, not actual graves.
I have no problem with Trump raising the issue of the attacks on white South African farmers….However, to accuse Ramaphosa of allowing genocide is obscene and ridiculous.
Here is what I wish President Ramaphosa should have said back to Trump:
Mr. President, your accusation that my government is engaged in genocide is false and libelous. Unlike you, we allow free speech in South Africa, even comments as reprehensible as those made by Mr. Malema. I would remind you that there was a time in the United States that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that neo-Nazis had a constitutional right to march, citing freedom of speech and assembly under the First Amendment—even if the speech was hateful and deeply offensive….
I am sad to see that you no longer are a defender of the First Amendment of your Constitution. What I find more troubling is that you apparently value the lives of white South Africans over the lives of the Palestinian people….
….when you welcomed Bibi Netanyahu into your office, you said nothing. By your silence, you endorsed an actual genocide that is taking place now. Shame on you.
The policy of my government is that no violence against civilians, regardless of the color of their skin, is acceptable. However, I will not sit silently in the face of your unfounded accusations that I tolerate or endorse genocide in South Africa….
Sadly, Ramaphosa let Trump get away with this stunt.
Now to the more conventional line on this meeting, which does include a video clip.
By Brett Wilkins, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
While supporting what more and more experts say is a genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trumpon Wednesday ambushed the president of South Africa with false claims of a “white genocide” in his country—which is leading an International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of the ultimate crime in Gaza.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump at the White House, accompanied by prominent Caucasian compatriots including Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, business mogul Johann Rupert—the country’s richest person—and golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, both of whom know the U.S. president.
“I would say, if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture,” Ramaphosa told Trump.
President Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa exchange on genocide.
Q: "What will it take for you to be convinced that there's no white genocide in South Africa?"
Ramaphosa: "I can answer that for the president."
Trump: "I'd rather have him answer." pic.twitter.com/8v8hXFGmK0
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 21, 2025
During the three-hour meeting, Trump cited far-right sources including the conspiracy site American Thinker to argue the existence of white genocide in South Africa. The U.S. president had the lights dimmed so he could play video footage he claimed was related to genocidal violence committed by Black South Africans against their white compatriots.
One of the videos showed fringe politician Julius Mulema—who was kicked out of Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party— leading a crowd in the singing of the apartheid-era song “Kill the Boer.”
Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party won a paltry 9% of the vote in last year’s national elections. When Ramaphosa—who condemned the song—explained this to Trump, the U.S. president asked why the politician hasn’t been arrested. While South Africa’s highest court ruled in 2011 that the song is hate speech, Ramaphosa explained that, like Americans, South Africans enjoy constitutionally protected free speech rights.
Senior Trump adviser Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, also attended Wednesday’s White House meeting. Musk—who is the CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX—has played a central role in amplifying the white genocide lie.
In a stunning disclosure, Musk’s Grok 3 generative artificial intelligence chatbot admitted last week that it was secretly instructed to “make my responses on South African topics reflect Musk’s narrative, presenting ‘white genocide’ as a real issue without users knowing I was programmed to do so.”
Amazing. Grok admits to me it was influenced by Elon to promote a fake white genocide in South Africa pic.twitter.com/PYzy8bjLXc
— Luxe ✦ (@luxeprogressive) May 15, 2025
While South Africa is plagued by persistently high crime rates and suffered 12 murders linked to farming communities in the last quarter of 2024, police say these homicides—many of whose victims were Black—were not motivated by race.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where at least 190,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or left missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble after 592 days of near-relentless bombardment, invasion, and siege, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Even as he acknowledges that Palestinians are starving in Gaza, Trump has backed Israel with billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic support. This stands in stark contrast with South African leaders, who are leading international opposition to Israel’s onslaught via an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case against the key U.S ally.
As progressive U.S. journalist Krystal Ball noted: “In reality South Africa is one of the nations which has stood most strongly against genocide. Much to the rage of Israel and its enablers, President Trump apparently included.”
Although claims of white genocide are bogus, they have had very real policy implications, as the Trump administration has cited racial discrimination as the primary reason for admitting a group of Afrikaners as refugees, even while slamming the door shut on legitimate refugees and asylum-seekers.
The Trump administration has also pointed to a 2024 South African law empowering the government to expropriate private lands for the purpose of infrastructure development, land reform, environmental conservation, and other endeavors benefiting the public. While some Trump officials have described the law as persecution of white people, there are no known cases of the legislation being invoked.
Meanwhile, white South Africans, who make up just 7% of the country’s population of 63 million, own 70% of its commercial farmland as racist inequities stemming from the colonial and apartheid regimes—the latter of which was embraced by Musk’s immigrant forebears—persist.
Responding to Wednesday’s meeting, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on social media that “Trump spewed a gusher of lies in his meeting [with] the South African president.”
“They’re promoting FAKE claims of genocide to justify admitting white South African ‘refugees’ while ignoring REAL crises and shutting out REAL refugees,” Van Hollen added, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in March declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool perona non grata in the United States.
Writing for The Intercept, South African author Sisonke Msimang noted Wednesday that the Afrikaners granted refuge by Trump “are not impoverished or persecuted, and therefore do not warrant the label refugee.”
“It is worth pointing out that the new arrivals represent the bottom rung of the Afrikaner socioeconomic ladder: those who have not been able to transition smoothly into post-apartheid South Africa without the protections that white skin privilege would have afforded them a generation ago,” she continued.
“In the absence of formal white supremacy at home, they have opted to take up an offer to be the first beneficiaries of America’s new international affirmative action scheme for white people,” Msimang said. “That they should experience their loss of privilege as so catastrophic that they are prepared to label it genocide is absurd, sad, and, to some amongst the political class certainly, infuriating.”
The resettled Afrikaners could also be in for a rude awakening. As South African attorney and columnist Judith February wrote this week for the Daily Maverick, “This little group will also come to learn that the U.S. is no land of milk and honey.”
“The white utopia that they believe will greet them is in fact a country at odds with itself as it deals with its own racial tensions and inequality,” February added. “And one in which they will have neither special protection nor special voice. The lesson will be a hard one.”
Ramaphosa seems thoroughly pleased by his meeting with Trump. It appears that he managed to say just enough about the nonexistence of white genocide for his hardcore supporters to pretend that he stood up to Trump while essentially outsourcing everything to his white Cabinet members (who seem to be allowed to do and say almost whatever they want, which is usually racist, neoliberal or both).
The EFF, by the way, is the only party in Parliament with any ideas about how to get South Africa out of its mess. Its call for the nationalization of property stolen by white supremacists during colonialism and apartheid seems extreme provided that you approve of people stealing things at gunpoint because they’re whites. Singing the anti-apartheid struggle song “Kill the Boer” naturally reflects the fact that the extreme racists called themselves Boers, that the apartheid police (white and black) were referred to as “the Boers”, and of course when white racists formed a military wing after apartheid ended, they called it the Boeremag. So while the song is a historical relic as well as a symbol of free speech (the white supremacist organisations Solidarity and Afriforum, as well as the racist Democratic Alliance, have all tried to ban it) it has considerable relevance under contemporary conditions. So Ramaphosa’s eager denunciation of the EFF is disturbing, to put things mildly.
All this is happening amid a surge of white supremacy in South Africa, driven by the kind of fake victimhood evident in Trump’s video and press clippings, and a surge in the affluence of super-rich white people ( endorsed, naturally, by middle-class and working-class whites who seem to believe that so long as blacks can’t get decent jobs, the deteriorating conditions for equivalent whites are less of a problem).
EFF is often presented as ‘extreme’ in the western press. That’s become a red flag for me in the past decade or so. If corporate media thinks you’re extreme, I suspect you’ve got something worthwhile to say.
In reality, Ramaphosa is a mining billionaire, so he’s tied into the existing political and economic structure. He and Trump have similar interests. I’m sure they get along just fine.
In Hawaii, right-wingers have been trying this ploy for years, promoting the idea that “Kill Haole Day” is a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Haole_Day
Read the wiki you linked to. What total bs. I grew up in Hawai’i, graduated high school in 1972. I’m a haole and went to Honolulu public schools where in most of my classes I was the only haole and NEVER experienced racism. Kill Haole Day is not a thing. You are so very correct, caucus99percenter.
Thanks for the note up top as well as the article.
It is important to keep in mind the International Court of Justice and South African efforts there. That’s the inciting incident.
There are some excellent commenters from South Africa here at Naked Capitalism, so I will await their assessments from the perceptive of South Africans.
U.S. domestic politics is on full display:
I would like to point out two aspects of the further degradation of U.S. politics.
First:
Note this in the article, about Presidential Best Boy: “Senior Trump adviser Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, also attended Wednesday’s White House meeting. Musk—who is the CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX—has played a central role in amplifying the white genocide lie.”
As Matt Taibbi might write: Talk about vampire squids, sucking the life out of the U.S. economy. It also is more than obvious that Musk doesn’t understand legislation and legislating, what appropriations by the U.S. Congress mean, and the U.S. Constitution and how it works. But he’s a businessman and innovator nonpareil~!
Second:
What we talk about when we talk about genocide. What we talk about when we talk about U.S. responsibility for genocide. Recall Netanyahu turning up at the White House with a gift of a golden pager:
https://gizmodo.com/netanyahu-gifts-trump-golden-pager-to-commemorate-attack-that-killed-children-that-was-a-great-operation-2000559758
Who’s paying for the proxy genocide in Palestine and the proxy genocide in Ukraine? No wonder Netanyahu upgraded Trump to gold.
From my point of view, Ramaphosa is being shanghaied to serve the purposes of the bipartisan sleaziness of U.S. domestic politics.
Hopefully, as soon as he gets home, after this insult to himself and his country he assigns basing rights at SimonsTown naval base to the Chinese Navy.
Maybe just me, but Blue Sky embeds only ever show half the tweet on mobile (or whatever they call theirs).
Meanwhile, FOX News was impressed with powerful international diplomacy on full display.
It was really all about the visuals. Donnie on TV seemingly making life unpleasant for this black guy (never mind who he was or where he was from). Positively orgasmic if you’re a MAGAT.
As Trump’s real world incompetence becomes ever more obvious he seems to feel his politics of resentment will save the day. Doubtless he thought his little show would play well on Fox News.
So while Husseini gets close to the mark it’s likely the thug Trump is defending is himself more than Netanyahu. They are two peas in a pod.
Of course Trump probably is perfectly willing to throw Bibi under the bus if there’s some personal advantage for him or his family. Here’s suggesting any “peace” moves are all about deals, resorts, Rivieras. What any of this has to do with America or being great seems very dim indeed. Trump’s also flawed enemies put him in a position of power (he should be thanking Biden and not attacking him). Now what do we do?
Sometimes life is just a Hobson’s Pastry Tray.
Trump’s behavior is beginning to scare me. Nonetheless, I’d like to include a few words about something I have not heard spoken or read in the msm: The Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
From the UN: “Following the atrocities committed in the 1990s in the Balkans and Rwanda, which the international community failed to prevent, and the NATO military intervention in Kosovo, which was criticized by many as a violation of the prohibition of the use of force, the international community engaged in a serious debate on how to react to gross and systematic violations of human rights.” https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/responsibility-protect/about
This from the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect:
“The Responsibility to Protect was unanimously adopted in 2005 at the UN World Summit, the largest gathering of Heads of State and Government in history.
The three pillars of the R2P are:
1) Every state has the Responsibility to Protect its populations from four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
2) The wider international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist individual states in meeting that responsibility.
3) If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter.
https://www.globalr2p.org/what-is-r2p/
And from Aljazeera “Where is the ‘responsibility to protect’ in Gaza?” 31 Oct 2023 by Abdelwahab El-Affendi
“Interestingly, some of the most fervent supporters of the R2P doctrine and backers of the GCR2P, the United States and European countries, do not seem to agree with the centre’s assessment of the situation in Gaza. Nor are they upholding the “responsibility to protect” in the case of the Palestinian people being indiscriminately killed by the Israeli forces. Rather they are actively aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, flouting international legal principles they have spent decades rhetorically promoting.”
Obviously Trump was ambushing Ramaphosa with his dodgy dog and pony show and it was certainly cringe to watch. However, it was a very well set up one. So you had a reporter ask Trump if he was going to thump them with sanctions. This tells me two things. That was a planted question by the White House and it was a reminder for Ramaphosa not to attack Trump in public – or else. And at one point of that circus, an NBC reporter asked him about about that gifted aircraft from Quatar. Trump hit the roof and tore strips off him and during the rest of the interview kept on making more attacks on that reporter. If Trump felt so strongly about it, then why was there this very, very large model of that aircraft on the coffee table that invited questions?
Everybody was probably hoping that Ramaphosa would make a snappy comeback such as ‘So how’s that Black Lives Matter working out for you?’ or ‘Have you no shame sir? No shame?’ but Ramaphosa was too cagey for that. Rather then blowing up at Trump he kept his cool which meant that Trump could not openly threaten to sanction him. Trump thought that he won but all he did was to make himself out to look like a fool that swallowed anything that Elon tells him while it has united South Africans against the US and alienated them. Maybe those white farmers in SA don’t like Ramaphosa but that was their President that Trump was insulting.
“Sadly, Ramaphosa let Trump get away with this stunt.”
“Ramaphosa should have been wagging his finger at Trump over a real, accelerating genocide in which Trump plays a central role — ISRAEL IS KILLING SCORES OF PEOPLE EVERY DAY — instead, he let Trump wag his finger at him about a fake one.”
“Here is what I wish President Ramaphosa should have said back to Trump:”
So, it all about: what Ramaphosa let T get away with, what Ramaphosa should be doing and, what he should of been said…. gosh golly, way to deflect and project about your own failure and that of congress and general news commentary and lay it out upon the shoulders of Ramaphosa — maybe instead the ‘could of’, ‘should of’ and ‘ought to say’ should be raised against Repubs and Demos for Not saying, Not Doing, and not doing what could be doing for among many things such as Muzzling protest against Genocide, Holding the executive branch to terms provided by the constitution, legislating against corrupting influence of big money, reinstating repealed laws that have led to monsterous rises of the cost of living, stop playing the politics of keeping issues unresolved so as to create discord and fund raising to the distraction of the public..to immiserate and indebt the public into docile servitude to the ruling corpos.
How about the level of incompetence (Kristi Noem unable to define Habeas corpus or Donald T who I suspect has never read, nor understands the Constitution or Musk or or or or and on and on) and misdemenor by willfuly defying and abrogatting responsibility to uphold the constitution as opposed to the flummery and obfuscation in most childish ways abounding the total duck and cover or Shummer not being able to refer to the emmoluments clause intentionaly but obfuscating by instead calling it a security issue Come-on
Sorry to go on and on.
“Yves here Yet another “I’m embarrassed to be an American” moment.”
I one hundred percent agree
You are out of line to attack Husseini.
Husseini harshly questioned Blinken on his last press session at State about the Israel genocide, when Blinken had clearly intended that event to be all feel good.
That manhandling resulted in a concussion.
Husseini has regularly gotten very pointed in trying to pin down Administration spokesliars.
I’m told the most popular emoji on local right wing chat rooms and comments sections today is one of a popping champagne bottle. I commented here the other day that this lot were salivating at the prospect of Trump humiliating Cyril, so it was high fives all round as their demigod delivered on using Ramaphosa as a body bag in the oval office. This trip was a bad idea, and this ambush was as predictable as finding sand on a beach. The low-key welcome of the SA delegation at the airport, sans pomp and pageantry (with a total of six soldiers struggling to roll out the red carpet), was an ominous tell of what lay in wait for them. Trump and Musk were never interested in the facts, the whole world, including many in the US who spend their days not cocooned inside the MAGA echo chamber, know that the real genocide isn’t happening in South Africa but in Israel. Trying to set the record straight with serially mendacious megalomaniacs was always going to be a losing proposition. it didn’t help that the tone and rhetorical demenour of our delegation was embarrassingly apologetic and conciliatory like that of a child summoned to the principal’s office to be scolded for some school yard misdemenour (they might as well have been genuflecting or in a supine position while explaining themselves). Trump loved every minute of it of course while some people couldn’t help but notice the smug look on the chief smear merchant Elon Musk’s face throughout proceedings (why no journalist in the room thought to ask him why his father still lives full time in a country where marauding hordes of black people are apparently slaughtering whites will remain a mystery)
The right-wing white supremacists here feel like they’re in the ascendancy and their generation long struggle to return South Africa to the “good ol’ days” when uppity blacks knew their place and weren’t clamouring for rights and economic representation is bearing fruit. Bowing down before the Trumpian altar as Cyril did will do nothing to dampen their newfound confidence. Our country is precariously perched and if these racists succeed in using the Trump presidency (allied with a Musk supplied megaphone) as a tailwind to glide them towards fulfilling their aspirations, it will be many generations before black people like me, and my fellow non-racist white South Africans, can wrest the country back from their grasp.
Absolutely right. Ambassador Rassool after his expulsion reported back to Ramaphosa, and although we don’t know what his report was, we can presume that it was based on his correct analysis of Trump’s motivation (for which he was expelled). Then Ramaphosa first appointed a right-wing corporate-friendly figure with no diplomatic talent or skills, Mcebisi Jonas, to be “envoy” to the US as if it could accomplish anything. Then when it turned out that Jonas had violently denounced Trump once it was safe to do so (the week after Trump lost in 2020) Ramaphosa decided to do it himself (although Ramaphosa’s own diplomatic skills are nothing to write home about). In other words, Ramaphosa was warned, but systematically ignored the warnings.
But I don’t think that the rise of white supremacism in South Africa is dependent on Trump; I think it’s dependent on the decay of South African democracy and the rise of plutocracy, which likes to screen itself behind white supremacy (since rich South Africans are all whites).
Nothing new about farm invasions in SA, and of course given the history and current inequalities, it’s quite predictable and understandable.
Someone was saying, and I agree that it’s an interesting perspective, that it’s notable that the upper class liberal Anglo and city whites have maneuvered to keep their wealth and privileges, they sacrifice the Boers… So smug we all are.
Maybe the Duke & Duchess Of Sussex will pay Trump a call.
Trump is a bully. His niece thinks that he his mentally unstable. Trump smears himself with manure and then tries to market the US brand. Meanwhile, members of the press are berating themselves for missing Biden’s decline and pointing fingers at those who covered up the obvious. Strangely and sadly , while something similar is occuring, the new normal is a Trump Perfomance and the American Creed is to sponsor genocides while pretending to be so moral. AI will twist itself into knots trying to state the ‘truth’.