South Africa has been a focus of President Trump’s criticism in his second term.
Mr. Trump has made debunked claims that white farmers in South Africa are being killed in a genocide. On May 12, Mr. Trump welcomed some of those farmers into the United States as refugees. He has also expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the United States and has cut off American aid.
South Africa will get its chance to directly rebut what it says is Mr. Trump’s misinformation with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s scheduled visit to the White House on Wednesday.
Mr. Ramaphosa faces the political challenge of standing firm on his country’s principles without angering Mr. Trump. America is South Africa’s second-largest trading partner, but government officials say that many of their policies that upset Mr. Trump are necessary to undo the racial inequality created during apartheid.
Mr. Ramaphosa is expected to try to convince Mr. Trump that the United States has a lot to gain from maintaining close ties with South Africa, the largest economy in Africa. The South African president will also try to reset his relationship with Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and is perhaps the leader’s loudest critic.
Afrikaner refugees
South African officials have disputed Mr. Trump’s assertion that Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that created and led the apartheid regime, are being persecuted and killed at home.
South African police data don’t support the narrative of mass murder. From April 2020 to March 2024, 225 people were killed on farms in South Africa, according to South African police officials. But many of the victims — 101 — were current or former workers living on farms who tend to be Black. Fifty-three of the victims were farmers, who are usually white.
Mr. Ramaphosa plans to call on Mr. Trump to support an independent investigation into the genocide claims, said Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for the South African president.
Since his first term, Mr. Trump has embraced claims by some Afrikaners that they are targeted in mass killings in rural communities, where many of them own farms, and that they face discrimination in hiring, land ownership and other areas.
In January, Mr. Ramaphosa signed into law a measure that allows the government to seize privately held land without providing compensation when it’s in the public interest. Mr. Trump then issued an executive order in February offering refugee status to Afrikaners. This month, top administration officials welcomed 59 Afrikaners as refugees at an airport near Washington.
Elon Musk
Mr. Musk has been among the loudest critics of his native country, using posts on X to amplify Mr. Trump’s claims that white South Africans suffer from genocide and racism.
Mr. Ramaphosa has spoken with Mr. Musk several times over the past year in an effort to entice him to do business in the country he left as a teenager. He hopes to continue that pitch at the White House, where he expects that Mr. Musk will be part of Mr. Trump’s delegation, Mr. Magwenya said.
Mr. Ramaphosa plans to raise the possibility that Tesla could build electric vehicle charging stations throughout South Africa and, in exchange, receive favorable tariffs for Teslas to be imported into the country. South Africa also has facilities available to launch rockets for SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s space exploration company.
Israel and the war in Gaza
Mr. Ramaphosa plans to counter Mr. Trump’s Afrikaner genocide accusations by pointing to America’s support of Israel. His spokesman said that Mr. Ramaphosa will argue it is “laughable that you can use the genocide word on South Africa, while on the other hand you’re looking the other way where the actual genocide is being committed.”
South Africa brought genocide charges against Israel at The Hague in 2023, related to Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Some South African government officials and analysts said they believed the genocide charges contributed to the Trump administration’s attacks on their country.
Mr. Ramaphosa plans to lean into areas of alignment he has with Mr. Trump on Israel, such as the need to ensure that humanitarian aid gets into Gaza.
This could prove to be a complicated balance for Mr. Ramaphosa to strike. As a matter of principle, South Africans have long equated what they experienced during apartheid to what Palestinians are enduring under Israel’s control.
Israel has strongly denied the genocide accusation at the court, and it has long rejected the comparison of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to apartheid.
Mr. Trump has also been critical of what he perceives as South Africa’s cozy relationship with Iran and Hamas; South Africa has recently engaged diplomatically with both of them. Those could be pressure points that Mr. Ramaphosa will have difficulty deflecting.
A new trade deal
While the future of a preferential trade program for sub-Saharan African countries remains in doubt, Mr. Ramaphosa plans to propose a trade deal for South Africa.
Mr. Magwenya declined to offer specifics of the proposal, but has said that it could look at areas in which the two nations could increase trade, such as the energy sector.
South African officials believe that appealing to Mr. Trump’s economic and business interests would be the best way to get past the deep philosophical differences they have with him.
In 2023, South Africa exported $13.9 billion worth of goods to the United States and was the biggest market in sub-Saharan Africa for American imports, taking in $7.2 billion worth of goods.
John Eligon is the Johannesburg bureau chief for The Times, covering a wide range of events and trends that influence and shape the lives of ordinary people across southern Africa.
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