The president of South Africa has revealed how shocked he was by Donald Trump’s “racist” views when he met the U.S. leader in person last year.
“I just thought that he is so uninformed, truly uninformed,” Cyril Ramaphosa told the New York Times on Thursday.
“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,” he added. “In my view, he was just dismissive.”
Ramaphosa was a close confidant of President Nelson Mandela, who fought for almost half a century to liberate Black South Africans from apartheid. Trump has repeatedly pushed far-right conspiracy theories about an ongoing “white genocide” in South Africa under Ramaphosa’s leadership.
He has gone so far as to offer asylum to white citizens on the basis they face obstacles comparable to those faced by Black South Africans during segregation. Proponents of those claims often point to deadly attacks on white-owned farms in the country.
South Africa has one of the highest crime rates on the continent. Such attacks are known to target white- and Black-owned farms indiscriminately, while Black South Africans represent the overwhelming majority of homicide victims nationwide.
Meeting Ramaphosa at the Oval Office last May, Trump nevertheless handed the South African leader a stack of newspaper clippings as evidence of far-right claims about an ongoing “white genocide.” Some of those clippings were not in any way related to South Africa, the NYT reports.
Trump also presented Ramaphosa with a video of what he claimed were dead white South African farmers. Reuters later reported the footage came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, roughly as far from South Africa as the District of Columbia is from Colombia.
“I think he’s just bereft of any reality about what South Africa is all about and what it stands for,” Ramaphosa said. “We are rather amazed at the attention he gives to us. We are a small country, and we are no threat to the United States.”
The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment on this story. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly responded with a statement ignoring Ramaphosa’s comments completely. Instead, she said: “President Trump is courageously calling attention to the harrowing stories of Afrikaners, who are experiencing violent attacks, vandalism of property, death threats, racial slurs against farmers, massive mobs singing songs calling for their death, and laws that prevent many from finding work. The South African government, at minimum, does not respond, but President Trump has a humanitarian heart. He will continue to speak the truth about these injustices.”
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