Shock and anger in South Africa after Trump’s Oval Office ambush

JOHANNESBURG — “All in all it was awful but it could have been worse,” was how one South African newspaper summed up President Cyril Ramaphosa’s extraordinary Oval Office meeting with President Trump on Wednesday.

Many South Africans – including those in the government delegation – had feared a repeat of February’s heated exchange between Trump and and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

But despite what another newspaper called “serious provocation” by Trump – which included the dramatic moment he asked for the lights to be dimmed and played a lengthy montage of video footage purporting to prove “white genocide” – Ramaphosa kept his cool.

The South African leader, who was a protégé of Nelson Mandela, has experience intense negotiations. He was one of the key mediators in the talks that ended South Africa’s apartheid in 1994.

Most South African media as well as many social media users are praising him for remaining calm and polite throughout what’s widely being called the ambush by Trump, though some wished he’d hit back harder.

“Who among us did not also secretly yearn to see Ramaphosa fight back a little more?” asked writer Rebecca Davis in the Daily Maverick newspaper.

Ramaphosa himself tried to put a positive spin on things at a press briefing later on Wednesday. He said behind closed doors, at the lunch that followed the Oval Office drama, things had gone well. Trump might still attend the G20 in Johannesburg later this year, he said, adding they had also had good trade talks.

“I know that many South Africans were filled with concern and fear that we will have a ‘Z’ moment,” the president said, apparently referring to Zelenskyy, “and all that did not ensue.”

Debunking Disinformation 

Despite the South African delegation’s attempts to explain the facts to the U.S. leader, Trump again and again repeated a right-wing conspiracy theory that there is systematic persecution and “genocide” of white South Africans. And used disinformation to support his allegations.

He misrepresented a video showing a protest, where people placed white crosses in a field to commemorate a farmer and his wife who were murdered in a 2020 home robbery, as a “burial site.” South African news site News24 said there are no bodies at the site and the number of crosses do not relate to the number of murders.

Trump also played clips of two controversial South African opposition politicians – who in no way speak for the government – singing songs from the struggle against apartheid, including one called “kill the Boer” – which means Afrikaaner or farmer.

The one politician, firebrand Julius Malema, heads a flailing opposition party that won just over 9% of the vote at the last elections. Trump asked why he wasn’t arrested. In fact Malema was taken to court on charges of hate speech for singing the song at rallies, and the Constitutional drug called for sinr 9% of the lemang a .selmbusfreeh rar 9hate sarmer.

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