PRESIDENT Donald Trump used a White House meeting to ambush South African president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of a "white genocide" in the country.
“People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety,” said Trump, who at one point dimmed the lights in the Oval Office to play a video of a communist politician playing a controversial anti-apartheid song that includes lyrics about killing a farmer.
“Their land is being confiscated and in many cases they’re being killed.”
Trump had already cut all US assistance to South Africa and welcomed several dozen white South African farmers to the US as refugees as he pressed the case that a “genocide” is under way in the country.
The US president has launched a series of accusations at South Africa’s black-led government, claiming it is seizing land from white farmers, enforcing anti-white policies and pursuing an anti-American foreign policy.
Experts in South Africa say there is no evidence of whites being targeted, although farmers of all races are victims of violent home invasions in a country that suffers from a very high crime rate.
“People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety,” Trump said. “Their land is being confiscated and in many cases they’re being killed.”
Ramaphosa pushed back against Trump’s accusation. The South African leader had sought to use the meeting to set the record straight and salvage his country’s relationship with the United States.
The bilateral relationship is at its lowest point since South Africa enforced its apartheid system of racial segregation, which ended in 1994.
“We are completely opposed to that,” Ramaphosa said of the behaviour alleged by Trump in their exchange.
He added “that is not government policy” and “our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying”.
Trump was unmoved.
“When they take the land, they kill the white farmer,” he said.
The South African president’s delegation included golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, a gesture to the golf obsessed US 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.
Elon Musk also attended Wednesday’s talks.
Musk has been at the forefront of the criticism of his homeland, casting its affirmative action laws as racist against whites.
