Political analysts are calling President Donald Trump’s decision to screen Julius Malema’s ‘Kill the Boer’ footage during bilateral talks an ‘orchestrated ambush’.
This follows a confrontation at the Oval Office, where President Donald Trump reiterated claims of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa.
This, as University of Johannesburg Professor Chris Landsberg praises President Cyril Ramaphosa’s restrained response to what he describes as a deliberately provocative Oval Office moment.
Professor Landsberg also adds that President Ramaphosa’s response to the situation was very good and calm.
Meanwhile, colleague Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo says President Donald Trump didn’t pay attention to detail when he made allegations against South Africa, arguing that the SA delegation arrived underprepared for Trump’s allegations.
Praises for Ramaphosa
As Reuters reports, South Africans praised President Ramaphosa for keeping his cool amid Trump’s false claims of a white genocide in the country, but wondered why their leader had made the trip to Washington.
Ramaphosa had hoped his talks with Trump in the White House on Wednesday would help reset relations with the United States that have nosedived since the US president took office in January.
But Trump spent most of the conversation confronting his visitor with false claims that South Africa’s white minority farmers are being systematically murdered and having their land seized. South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but the overwhelming majority of victims are Black.
“He didn’t get Zelenskyed. That’s what we have to hang on to,” Rebecca Davis of the national Daily Maverick, herself a white South African, wrote in a column.
“It was impossible not to feel for Ramaphosa, who had been bombarded with messaging before the trip that he should under no circumstances lose his cool (or) rise to the bait. So he didn’t.”
In a meeting at the White House in February, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Zelenskiy heatedly tried to argue his case.
For some, though, Ramaphosa’s composure raised the question of what he had achieved by subjecting himself to that onslaught.
“I don’t think it was the right call. I don’t think we need to explain ourselves to USA,” 40-year-old Sobelo Motha, a member of a shopkeepers’ union, said on the streets of Johannesburg.
“We … we know there’s no white genocide. So for me, it was pointless exercise.”
The South African president arrived prepared for an aggressive reception, bringing popular white South African golfers in his delegation and hoping to discuss trade.
But in a choreographed performance, Trump pounced, moving quickly to a list of concerns about the treatment of white South Africans, which he punctuated by playing a video and leafing through a stack of articles that he said proved his allegations.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri defended Ramaphosa’s handling of the encounter.
“Most importantly, the two presidents engaged,” he told Reuters by telephone.
“It’s not in the president’s (Ramaphosa’s) nature to be combative. (He) looks at issues calmly, matter-of-factly. I think that’s what we (should) expect of our presidents,” he added.
Many in South Africa were baffled that the world’s most powerful man could believe easily disproved claims about ethnic cleansing of white South Africans that circulate on far-right social media. -Additional reporting by Reuters
