President Trump is meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday, with South African-born billionaire Elon Musk present, for a critical conversation amid tensions between the U.S. and South Africa.
A White House official confirmed Musk will join the meeting with the two world leaders, as Mr. Trump echoes Musk’s claim that genocide is being committed against White Afrikaners.
The U.S. accepted 59 White Afrikaners last week, granting them status as refugees. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said White farmers in South Africa have been targets of “genocide” — an allegation South Africa has rejected — and insists South Africa is “out of control.”
The South African government denies that White Afrikaners have faced racial discrimination. And Ramaphosa has deemed the individuals “cowards” for resettling in the U.S.
Ramaphosa’s office said the White House meeting, set to begin at 11:30 a.m. ET, will offer a “platform to reset the strategic relationship between the two countries.” Mr. Trump has levied new tariffs on South Africa, as he has virtually everywhere else.
Afrikaners are White South Africans of Dutch descent who have lived in South Africa for four centuries. In addition to English, Afrikaners have their own language, Afrikaans, which has its roots in Dutch and is one of 12 official languages of South Africa.
The expedited process for the Afrikaners comes as the Trump administration is working to suspend the refugee admission program, drawing multiple court challenges.
In a tense exchange during a hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday on budget matters, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio if the Afrikaners are more persecuted than the Uyghurs or Rohingyas, or dissidents in Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, or than those who would be threatened by the Taliban, should they return to Afghanistan.
Kaine suggested the Trump administration is giving preference to Afrikaners due to the color of their skin, and asked Rubio why the U.S. should prioritize Afrikaners. Rubio said the Afrikaners are a “small subset.”
“It’s a new issue,” Rubio said. “And the president identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example. But that’s different from having these refugee programs that were basically spending money to put people up in communities and accommodate them, and it was acting as a magnet.”
“Let me challenge you, and I’m just going to say for the public, if you want to understand about the quote, persecution, of Afrikaner farmers, go look at the composition of the South African government,” Kaine responded. “Since July of 2024, there’s a government of national unity. And the opposition party today — the ANC — the Afrikaner Party, the Democracy Alliance, is part of the governing coalition. They joined the governing coalition a year ago, and the leader of that party was given the remit of Agriculture Minister Jan Steenhuisen, and he is the leader of the former Afrikaner party, still widely representing Afrikaners. He is the minister of agriculture in South Africa right now. I assert that this claim that there’s persecution of Afrikaner farmers is completely specious.”
Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.
Caroline Linton and
Sara Cook
contributed to this report.
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