(AFP) – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will seek to reset ties with Donald Trump and Elon Musk Wednesday after Washington’s unfounded claims of “genocide” against white Afrikaners sent relations plunging. Ramaphosa arrived at the White House with two of South Africa’s top golfers, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and its richest man Johann Rupert, in a bid to woo the golf-loving US president. The White House confirmed South African-born tech tycoon Musk, Trump’s top advisor, would also attend the meeting.
The support of the three high-profile Afrikaners in Ramaphosa’s delegation comes days after around 50 Afrikaners arrived in the United States to take up Trump’s offer of “refuge.” Trump made the offer despite the United States having halted arrivals of asylum seekers from most of the rest of the world as he cracks down on migration. Musk, the world’s richest man, has been a leading proponent of “white genocide” allegations that Pretoria strongly denies, and Trump has also taken up the claims.
The South African president was also expected to come bearing gifts, with reports that his government would offer Musk a deal to operate his Starlink satellite internet network in the country. The Tesla and SpaceX boss has accused Pretoria of “openly racist” laws, a reference to post-apartheid black empowerment policies seen as a hurdle to the licensing of Starlink. Ramaphosa’s office said he hoped to “reset the relationship” with South Africa’s second largest trading partner. But he will also stress to Trump that conspiracies of a “white genocide” are “patently false,” his spokesman Vincent Magwenya said.
– Land law row –
Trump’s administration has torn into a series of policies in South Africa since the US president began his second term in office. It has slammed South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice, cut foreign aid, announced 31 percent tariffs, and expelled Pretoria’s ambassador after he criticized Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
But the biggest issue for Trump and his team has been a South African land expropriation law signed in January that aims to redress the historical inequalities of white minority rule. Trump has bought into an unfounded assertion boosted by billionaire Musk that white farmers are being targeted in the country for murder. “It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about,” Trump told reporters on the day the 50 white South Africans arrived. “White farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
Musk, who leads Trump’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), lashed out at the land laws in a video appearance at the Qatar Economic forum on Tuesday. “Why are there racist laws in South Africa?” he said. Land ownership is a contentious issue in South Africa, with most farmland still owned by white people despite being only 7.3 percent of the population. Ramaphosa has rejected Washington’s assertion that the law will be used to arbitrarily confiscate white-owned land. Some right-wing Afrikaner lobby groups have claimed that Afrikaans farmers are being murdered in targeted killings, but authorities say this is unfounded. Most of the victims of South Africa’s sky-high murder rate are young black men in urban areas, according to police figures.
– Danny KEMP
© 2024 AFP
