Amna Nawaz
@PBSNewsHour·5.3M subscribers·62.2K videos
WATCH: Trump confronts South African president with video, defends Afrikaner resettlement
Posted
May 21, 2025
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May 21, 2025
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8:12Now PlayingPresident Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of not protecting white farmers from violence, while playing misleading videos that back up controversial and unfounded claims of white genocide in the country.
After a reporter asked Trump what it would take for him to be convinced that there is no white genocide in South Africa, Ramaphosa said it would take Trump “listening to the voices of South Africans” and reiterated that the claim isn’t true. He said white members of his administration would not have accompanied him to the Oval Office on Wednesday if there were a genocide.
Trump then asked his staff to “turn the lights down,” and play a video showing South African activists and protestors chanting about killing farmers as well as an aerial clip of what he said were large burial sites.
Ramaphosa responded that the clips were of small minority parties, not official government policy, and said South Africa is a “multi-party democracy… that allows people to express themselves.”
“There is criminality in our country,” he said. “People who do get killed unfortunately through criminal activity are not only white people. Majority of them are Black people.”
In recent days, the Trump administration has made a display of accepting Afrikaners, primarily white South African farmers, who feel they are being persecuted because of their race. White South Africans own three-quarters of privately held land in the country, and control about 60 percent of top corporate management jobs, despite comprising only 7 percent of the population.
Afrikaners are the descendants of predominantly Dutch settlers who colonized South Africa centuries ago. They were the architects of apartheid, the racist system of government that prioritized the country’s white minority which officially ended 30 years ago.
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