South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called Donald Trump’s policy of allowing white Afrikaners to apply for refugee status in the United States “racist,” saying the American president was “truly uninformed” in a rare case of direct criticism.
Ramaphosa told the New York Times that last year’s Oval Office meeting with the American leader, when Trump turned off 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.”
“I thought he is very uninformed, truly uninformed,” Ramaphosa said. “I realized that he is looking at South Africa through a completely confused lens, without realizing the real damage that apartheid caused. In my opinion, he was just dismissive.”
Trump has targeted South Africa since his second term began in January 2025. He has spread false accusations that the country’s white minority is suffering a “genocide” and that the government is confiscating their land.
In May, the United States expanded refugee status to Afrikaners – who once led apartheid’s repressive minority government and who, on average, remain many times wealthier than black South Africans – while sharply cutting its refugee program for people fleeing war and persecution.
Trump refused to attend the G20 leaders’ meetings in Johannesburg in November and banned South Africa from attending the US-hosted meeting in Miami later this year.
“I think Afrikaner politics is racist,” Ramaphosa said. “It’s that type of racist behavior that we want to be able to reduce so he can see the truth of the situation.”
In a statement to the New York Times, the White House said Trump was drawing attention to “the heartbreaking stories of Afrikaners.”
It said: “The South African government is, to say the least, unresponsive, but President Trump has a humanitarian heart. He will continue to tell the truth about these injustices.”
Ramaphosa said: “There is no white genocide or land grab, of white people’s land. And white farmers are not being driven out of the country or mistreated.”
South Africa’s president, who will step down as head of the African National Congress party next year and as the country’s leader in 2029, was unusually frank about Trump.
He said: “We are quite surprised by the attention you are giving us. We are a small country and we pose no threat to the United States.”
