US president is ‘truly uninformed’ for spreading claims of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa tells New York Times
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has called Donald Trump’s policy of allowing white Afrikaners to apply for refugee status in the US “racist”, saying the US president was “truly uninformed” in a rare instance of direct criticism.
Ramaphosa told the New York Times that last year’s Oval Office meeting with the US leader, when Trump turned down the lights and played a video that he falsely claimed showed there was a “white genocide” in South Africa, was a “spectacle” and an “ambush”.
“I just thought that he is so uninformed, truly uninformed,” Ramaphosa said. “I realised that he is looking at South Africa through a completely, sort of, foggy lens, without realising the real, real harm that apartheid did. In my view, he was just dismissive.”
Trump has targeted South Africa since starting his second term in office in January 2025. He has spread false allegations that the country’s white minority are undergoing a “genocide” and that their land is being seized by the government.
