Trump ambushes South Africa’s Ramaphosa over genocide claims in testy White House meeting

Trump then displayed printed copies of articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying "death, death" as he flipped through them.

Ramaphosa noted that there was crime in South Africa, and the majority of victims were Black. Trump cut him off and said: "The farmers are not Black."

Ramaphosa responded: "These are concerns we are willing to talk to you about."

In recent months, Trump has criticised South Africa's land reform law aimed at redressing the injustices of apartheid and its genocide court case against Israel.

Trump's criticism of South Africa began in early February in a post on Truth Social when he accused South Africa's government of seizing land from White Afrikaner farmers and a "massive Human Rights VIOLATION" against members of the White minority.

Video features chants often cited by Musk

Trump's allegation that Afrikaners were being mistreated was at the centre of an executive order he issued days later that cut all US assistance to South Africa. 

He went further this month, alleging there was a “genocide” against White farmers and the Trump administration has brought a small group of White South Africans to the US as refugees in what it says is the start of a larger relocation program.

Some White farmers have been killed in violent home invasions. But the South African government says the causes behind the relatively small number of homicides are misunderstood by the Trump administration; they are part of the country's severe problems with crime and not racially motivated, it says. Black farmers have also been killed.

The South African government has said the allegations against it are misinformation.

The video clip played at the Oval Office on Wednesday featured opposition Black South Afican politicians repeating an apartheid-era chant that contains the lyrics “kill the farmer” and “shoot the farmer”. The chant is sometimes used at political rallies by a minority opposition party.

It has often been cited by critics of South Africa – including South African-born Trump ally Elon Musk – as evidence of the persecution of White farmers because it uses the word Boer, which specifically refers to Afrikaners.

While Ramaphosa's party does not use the chant, the government maintains that minority parties have a right to exist in South Africa's multi-party system.

Musk has been at the forefront of the criticism of his homeland, casting its affirmative action business laws as racist. Musk said on social media that his Starlink satellite internet service wasn't able to get a license to operate in South Africa because he was White.