President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to meet with US leader Donald Trump to restore diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
Relations between the United States and South Africa have been strained after Trump accused the South African government of discriminating against minorities, in particular Afrikaners.
In February, the Trump administration offered refugee status to dozens of Afrikaners from South Africa. The first group of Afrikaner “refugees” arrived in the US on Monday, receiving a warm welcome from Washington DC officials.
During a press conference at the White House on Monday, Donald Trump claimed that the Afrikaners are fleeing a “terrible situation” in South Africa. When asked why he was bending rules for white South Africans while not prioritising applications from war-torn countries like Sudan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he said white farmers were killed.
“Because they’re being killed and we don’t want to see people be killed. South Africa’s leadership is coming to see me, I understand, sometime next week, and you know we’re supposed to have a G20 meeting there, and I don’t know if we can go unless the situation is taken care of. There is a genocide that is taking place that you people don’t want to write about,” Trump said.
Donald Trump says there’s a genocide in South Africa
“Farmers are being killed, they happen to be white; whether they are white or black, it makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa and the newspapers and television media don’t even talk about it. If it were the other way around, they’d talk about it, and that would be the only story they talk about.
This week, Ramaphosa dismissed claims that Afrikaners were being persecuted and said he and Donald Trump had held a telephonic conversation over the issue.
“I said ‘president, what you have been told by those people who are opposed to transformation back home in South Africa is not true.
“I added that we were well taught by Nelson Mandela and other iconic leaders like Oliver Tambo on how to build a united nation out of the diverse groupings that we have in South Africa.
“We are the only country in the continent where the colonisers came to stay and we have never driven them out of the country, so they are staying and they are making great progress,” he said.
Cyril Ramaphosa and Donald Trump are expected to have talks in Washington next week.
Do you think US and SA will make peace?
Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 0211.
Subscribe to The South African website’s newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
