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President Trump recently defended his decision to allow South African refugees to enter the US
Trump told reporters at the White House last week that "We’ve essentially extended citizenship to those people to escape from that violence and come here." (Credit US Network Pool Via AP.)
JOHANNESBURG — President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday for a make-or-break session, despite new accusations from the president this past Friday that South Africa is “out of control” and committing genocide.
Speaking on Air Force One as it returned from the Persian Gulf region, Trump repeated his claim that white Afrikaner South African farmers are being slaughtered and forced off their land. The Afrikaners are descendants of mostly Dutch settlers who first arrived in South Africa in 1652.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio elaborated on these claims Sunday on CBS, saying “all evidence [indicates] the farmers in South Africa are being treated brutally.”
Some 50 Afrikaners were flown to the U.S. as refugees last week. Rubio said there’s “more to come”. South Africa, and its president, denies claims of genocide and harassment.
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White South Africans supporting President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, gather for a demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria on Feb. 15, 2025. (Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images)
Could the Oval Office and the Wednesday meeting be the setting for a Zelenskyy-style dressing down of the South African president? In February, Ukraine’s president was involved in a shouting match with Trump and others, which reportedly led to him being ejected from the White House.
“The meeting is set to occur at a time when the relationship between the two countries has soured to unprecedented lows,” analyst Frans Cronje, Yorktown Foundation for Freedom advisory board member, told Fox News Digital.
Contentious issues:
- South Africa’s ambassador to Washington was thrown out of the U.S. for calling Trump a “white supremacist.”
- South Africa took legal action against U.S. ally Israel, accusing it of genocide in its war in Gaza, at the International Court of Justice.
- Ramaphosa’s ruling party, the ANC, has shown support for the terror group Hamas.
- Trade and military links with Iran and allegedly nuclear co-operation.
- Shown support for the designated terrorist group Hezbollah.
- Military links with Russia.
- The creation of the controversial Land Expropriation Act, which is aimed at seizing land the government wants in certain circumstances without compensation and which reportedly led to Trump’s focus on white Afrikaner families and claims they are being killed.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, left, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin (ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
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South Africa is “hosting Hamas and Hezbollah, doing business with Iran’s IRGC, prosecuting Israel at the ICJ and cozying up to Beijing and Moscow. These choices have consequences,” Max Meizlish, senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.
Meizlish said South Africa has “attracted the ire of the president and key members of Congress, who play significant roles in shaping the future of U.S.-South African relations. Unfortunately, President Ramaphosa and his colleagues in the ANC do not appear to fully appreciate this fact. President Trump should insist on meaningful change and be ready to back his demands up with tools like targeted sanctions and tariffs.”
But will the White House meeting be icy, feisty, even loud? Not from the South African side, former U.S. diplomat and Daily Maverick Associate Editor J. Brooks Spector told Fox News Digital. “Ramaphosa has a long track record of careful negotiating with adversaries.”
A man brandishes a replica toy gun during a pro-Palestinian demonstration organized by the South African opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters in front of the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria on Oct. 23, 2023. (Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images)
“He doesn’t raise his voice, even when others become heated. I’ve seen this firsthand. In a smoke-filled room in 1990 in South Africa’s dusty Free State, I watched Ramaphosa, then a leader of a black miners’ union, sometimes even smile as he quietly and successfully calmed down [the] often-shouting white miners accused of killing black colleagues underground and got the murders stopped.”
Spector continued, “It is almost certain Ramaphosa and his team have closely studied the way three recent prior meetings with Trump have gone – those with Zelenskyy (Ukraine), Starmer (the United Kingdom) and Carney (Canada) – in an effort to draw lessons about how to present their best face. He will not make neophyte negotiation mistakes.”
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South African Embassy officials Vusimuzi Madonsela, seated right, and Cornelius Scholtz, seated second left, talk at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, on May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Cronje told Fox News Digital that Ramaphosa and his country badly need the U.S.
“At home, Mr Ramaphosa is presiding over economic stagnation, with South Africa facing a rate of economic growth estimated at just over 1% together with an unemployment rate of over 30%. Mr. Ramaphosa will, therefore, be under great pressure to secure a deal.”
Some 600 U.S. companies operate in South Africa. Ramaphosa has taken four top ministers to Washington hoping to offer new deals, especially reportedly on natural gas, minerals and agricultural product sales to the U.S., and possibly finally the licensing of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system in South Africa.
Cronje noted a military perspective the U.S. will also want to consider: “South Africa commands the southern sea route between the Indian and Atlantic oceans, which is an important trade and naval choke point.”
Meizlish added that South Africa “holds vast mineral wealth and could anchor U.S. investment in Africa, but that doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye to its alignment with America’s enemies.”
President Donald Trump listens to a question during an event at the Oval Office on May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
South Africa’s chief rabbi, Dr. Warren Goldstein, told Fox News Digital that South Africa could “easily withdraw” its ICJ case against Israel if it wanted to, adding that “opinion polls show that there is very little domestic support for his (Ramaphosa’s) anti-Israel stance, with most holding positive views towards Israel, sharing the same conservative Christian values that deeply resonate with Mr. Trump’s support base in the U.S.”
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Meizlish said, “This visit can’t be about optics or deals that fail to address the root of South Africa’s malign foreign policy. Trump needs to push Ramaphosa to make substantive, structural reforms in his country’s foreign policy while also creating pathways for greater U.S. investment. It can’t just be one or the other.”
As South African politicians swept through Washington on Tuesday on a major lobbying exercise, trying to get traction on the idea of focusing on trade, Rubio told senators during a hearing that a reset in relations might be possible.
“If there’s a willingness on their side to reset relations, obviously [that’s] something we’ll explore, but we do so with eyes wide open to what they’ve done so far,” he said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the South African government for comment but received no response.
Paul Tilsley is a veteran correspondent who has reported on African affairs for more than three decades from Johannesburg, South Africa. He can be followed on Twitter @paultilsley