South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is openly calling President Donald Trump’s policies “racist” and “uninformed,” especially after what he called a “spectacle” of a meeting last year. Ramaphosa had visited the Oval Office, hoping to clear up Trump’s false claims about white South Africans facing discrimination and killings because of their race.
Instead, the meeting turned into an “ambush.” In an interview with the New York Times, Ramaphosa described Trump dimming the lights, presenting misleading video footage, and handing over a stack of newspaper clippings, some of which weren’t even related to South Africa, all to push his point. Trump even suggested that white South Africans were experiencing conditions as bad as Black people did during apartheid.
“I just thought that he is so uninformed, truly uninformed,” Ramaphosa said of Trump. “I realized that he is looking at South Africa through a completely, sort of, foggy lens, without realizing the real, real harm that apartheid did. In my view, he was just dismissive.”
Clearly, Trump is his own fact checker, and anyone else is wrong
One policy that Ramaphosa called “racist” is President Trump’s pathway for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority, to enter the United States as refugees. He said, “It is that racist sort of demeanor that we want to be able to whittle down so that he can see the truth of the situation.” The White House, however, said President Trump “has a humanitarian heart” and will “continue to speak the truth about these injustices,” drawing attention to “harrowing stories of Afrikaners.”
The Trump administration has regularly targeted South Africa, accusing the country of “doing very bad things,” imposing steep tariffs, and cutting American aid. Trump even disinvited South Africa from this year’s G20 meeting after Ramaphosa signed a law allowing the government to take privately held land without compensation. Trump falsely claimed this law was being used to seize white-owned land and that Afrikaners were being targeted and killed, calling it genocide.
Ramaphosa has firmly denied these claims, explaining that the law is meant to address severe wealth and ownership disparities created by past colonial and apartheid governments, which forcibly removed Black people from their land. “There’s no white genocide and there is no grabbing of land, of white people’s land,” he said, adding that “white farmers are not being driven out of the country and badly treated.”
As one of Africa’s leading statesmen, Mr. Ramaphosa is pushing for more African influence globally. He’s been in touch with countries like Iran and China, emphasizing South Africa’s “nonaligned” position, especially during conflicts.
Despite the “irritating” and “demeaning” insults, Ramaphosa is committed to improving relations with the Trump administration. He acknowledges that the White House meeting “shook the relationship quite a bit,” but he hasn’t lost hope.
Drawing inspiration from figures like Nelson Mandela, he believes “that human spirit to want to do good, to advance, will forever remain embedded in humanity.” It’s a powerful message of perseverance in the face of what sounds like some truly frustrating diplomatic encounters.
Published: Mar 6, 2026 10:49 am