President Ronald Reagan meets with Bishop Desmond Tutu in the Oval Office. Bettmann Archive / Getty Images
Trump’s ‘opposite of apartheid’ crusade contrasts with Reagan’s approach By Zachary B. Wolf, Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN, 6 minute read Published 6:04 PM EDT, Wed May 21, 2025
CNN — The 40-year arc of US relations with South Africa goes something like this:
► In 1984, President Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary that Desmond Tutu was “naive” for pressuring him — unsuccessfully — to support sanctions to pressure South Africa to end apartheid. Reagan refused to confront South Africa’s White regime in that way.
► In 2025, President Donald Trump cut aid to South Africa back in February and then ambushed post-apartheid South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with right-wing allegations of “genocide” against the country’s White minority that are not backed by evidence. He put the country’s Black president on the spot in front of TV cameras on Wednesday.
“I will say, apartheid – terrible,” Trump told Ramaphosa, as he prepared to complain there isn’t more awareness of the plight of Whites in South Africa. “This is sort of the opposite of apartheid,” the US president said, although he did not mean it as a good thing.
Trump came armed with videos of South Africa’s militant political minority, printouts from right-wing websites, two professional golfers and Elon Musk to demand that Ramaphosa do more for the White minority that controls most of the farmland in his country.
Repeatedly using the term “genocide,” Trump created an uncomfortable scene when he lowered the lights to play video of the militant political opposition in South Africa and told Ramaphosa that White farmers in the country are being persecuted, repeating claims that percolate in the right-wing ecosystem.
Read CNN’s fact check. There is no “genocide” against White South African farmers.
