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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Rachel Savage in Johannesburg

South Africa’s president calls Trump’s policy to offer refuge to white Afrikaners ‘racist’

Cyril Ramaphosa sits next to Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Ramaphosa says Trump ambushed him in the Oval Office in May 2025 by showing a video he falsely claimed showed ‘white genocide’ in South Africa. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

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”.

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