Trump confronts South African president, pushing claims of genocide – The Washington Post

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Trump amplified false claims and pressed South Africa’s president to protect White farmers, in a meeting originally meant to focus on trade.

May 21, 2025 at 1:58 p.m. EDT, Today at 1:58 p.m. EDT, 9 min

President Donald Trump’s bilateral meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on May 21 turned tense after the subject turned to political killings. (Video: Billy Tucker/The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post)

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Matt Viser and Lesley Wroughton

President Donald Trump pressed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to protect White Afrikaner farmers from violent attacks in an extraordinary Oval Office confrontation Wednesday in which it fell to others to remind Trump of the nation’s long-standing epidemic of violence against both White and Black people.

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.

Trump also made no mention of South Africa’s violent and discriminatory history of White rule before the end of apartheid.

Ramaphosa stared straight ahead during the exchange, occasionally moving in his seat and looking over at Trump, who wouldn’t make eye contact as a clip played of crowds repeatedly shouting, “Kill the Boers,” a reference to White farmers descended from colonists who built and led the nation’s brutal apartheid regime.

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