South Africa: Oval Office Drama Notwithstanding, the Door to the White House Has Been Opened for SA

@Presidency / X
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responding to President Conald Trump during their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House.
22 May 2025
Daily Maverick (Johannesburg)
analysis By Redi Tlhabi

Behind the scenes, in the Cabinet Room, it was a different universe. Laughter, jokes and a cordial environment prevailed. Even Elon Musk behaved like a normal human being.

We are right to be fixated on what transpired at the Oval Office on Wednesday during the meeting between presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Donald Trump. It was a grotesque spectacle, with one man, Ramaphosa, behaving like an adult, and another one, well, let's just say, it was vintage Trump, playing to his gallery with "receipts" of a white genocide. Ramaphosa tried to push back, with some in his delegation sharing their personal experiences of South Africa.

Trump pounced with old footage of some politicians singing "Kill the boer" -- a song that should have no place in a democratic South Africa. There were also images of rows of crosses, which he falsely claimed were a burial site for white farmers. BBC Verify reports that those were not graves, but a temporary memorial for a white couple that was murdered in KwaZulu-Natal in 2020.

Trump then launched into a deranged handout of gory pictures, one of which was found by numerous international news agencies to be of women killed in the Democratic Republic...

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