By NANDITA BOSE and JEFF MASON Reuters
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday with explosive false claims of white genocide and land seizures during a tense White House meeting that was reminiscent of his February ambush of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but the overwhelming majority of victims are Black. Ramaphosa had hoped to use Wednesday’s meeting to reset his country’s relationship with the U.S., after Trump canceled much-needed aid to South Africa, offered refuge to white minority Afrikaners, expelled the country’s ambassador and criticized its genocide court case against Israel. The South African president arrived prepared for an aggressive reception, bringing popular white South African golfers as part of his delegation and saying he wanted to discuss trade. The U.S. is South Africa’s second-biggest trading partner, and the country is facing a 30% tariff under Trump’s currently suspended raft of import taxes.

But in a carefully choreographed Oval Office onslaught, Trump pounced, moving quickly to a list of concerns about the treatment of white South Africans, which he punctuated by playing a video and leafing through a stack of printed news articles that he said proved his allegations.

With the lights turned down at Trump’s request, the video — played on a television that is not normally set up in the Oval Office — showed white crosses, which Trump asserted were the graves of white people, and opposition leaders making incendiary speeches. Trump suggested one of them, Julius Malema, should be arrested. The video was made in September 2020 during a protest after two people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses did not mark actual graves. An organizer of the protest told South Africa’s public broadcaster at the time that they represented farmers who had been killed over the years.

“We have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they’re coming to the United States,” Trump said. People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety. Their land is being confiscated, and in many cases, they’re being killed,” the president added, echoing a once-fringe conspiracy theory that has circulated in global far-right chat rooms for at least a decade with the vocal support of Trump’s ally, South African-born Elon Musk, who was in the Oval Office during the meeting.