The NPR Politics Podcast - Accusations Of White Genocide Derail US-South Africa Meeting

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House Wednesday ostensibly to talk about trade policies and the upcoming G20 Summit. But the Oval Office meeting with President Trump quickly devolved into accusations of a genocide against white farmers in South Africa. This podcast: voting correspondent Miles Parks, immigration reporter Ximena Bustillo, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Lexie Schapitl. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I am currently on my way to take two of my forecasts to the vet for their annual vaccines. They are very unhappy about it and were very vocal until I turned on the NPR politics podcast. I think Franco's voice was a calming presence and I probably need to hurry up and turn it on again. This podcast was recorded at 1 47pm on Wednesday, May 21st, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but these two will be back in the comfort of their home. I, however, will get to make this trip again in a couple of days with my other two cats.

Enjoy the show. A lot going on there. Poor babies. I know. The Franco's voice is there for you. It's always there. It's always there. Hey there. It's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Jimena Bustio and I cover immigration. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, South Africa and another extraordinary White House visit from a world leader. Mara, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with President Trump today at a time when relations between the two countries are pretty strained. Can you just lay out the state of play heading into this meeting? Well, heading into this meeting, Donald Trump has accused the South African government of basically standing by while tremendous numbers

of white farmers are killed. Now, he doesn't have evidence for that, but he has called it a genocide. He's also at odds with the South African government over other issues, like whether what Israel is doing is Gaza is a genocide. That's what South Africa says it is. They've actually brought a case in the International Court of Justice. Also at odds around the G20 meeting, which is going to be in South Africa and it is unclear if the United States will attend.

So then getting into this meeting, I would say, Mara watching it, the first few minutes were pretty normal. But it is a great honor to have you and I appreciate your call. He called. I don't know where he got my number, but I picked up. He said, I want to come over and I appreciate you called you he called I don't know where he got my number but I picked up that was my honor and thank you both Trump and Ramaphosa talked a little bit about what they were hoping for and then Trump opened up to questions and there was a question specifically on this issue that

you mentioned Mara involving white South Africans and we'll just play a little bit what happened there. Let me see the articles, please, if you would. And, excuse me, turn the lights down. Turn the lights down and just put this on. It's right behind you, Johan. So he dimmed the lights. He started to play a video

in what was obviously a planned moment, and the video showed leaders of a minority party in South Africa singing an apartheid-era struggle song called Kill the Boar, B-O-E-R, which means farmer or Afrikaner. Part of the video were white crosses on the roadside. And he seemed to suggest that these were thousands of white crosses, each one of them representing a white farmer who was murdered. That has no context and no evidence behind it. But as best he could, the South African leader did push back against President Trump and some of the accusations he was making.

I would say if there was a Frikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture. He would not be with me. So it'll take him, President Trump, listening to their stories, to their perspective. We should note that there is a lot of data that shows that even though white South Africans make up a very small amount of the population. Seven percent, I think. Right. They have the majority of the farmland. There's all these different statistics about that there is still wide inequality in favor of white people in South Africa. But Hemenna, I want to talk about how this is playing out in American policy because there was a development

where the U.S. government actually acted on some of these accusations to change immigration policy. Can you explain that? Right. So last week we saw the first cohort of white South African refugees be brought by the US government from South Africa to be resettled into the United States. And this was pretty significant for a number of reasons. The first being that the process of resettling these individuals Was very different from the way that other refugees have entered the United States in terms of this happened Really fast their background checks occurred within a matter of weeks and and maybe a few months Whereas sometimes this can take years for people to go through

The way that this was funded it was through a different pot of money and maybe a few months, whereas sometimes this can take years for people to go through. The way that this was funded, it was through a different pot of money within Health and Human Services that is for case management, not regular resettlement. They were brought on a government-chartered flight, and then they were greeted by high-ranking officials out of the Departments of Homeland Security and State, which most refugees, they arrive in the United States and they're instead greeted maybe by a refugee resettlement agency volunteer, not the Deputy Secretary of State. And so this really highlighted a shift in who the United States wants to prioritize

to open their doors in the United States wants to prioritize to open their doors in the United States. The second thing is this happened at a time where the rest of refugee resettlement broadly in the United States is on pause and refugee resettlement agencies are grappling with federal funding that has stopped mass layoffs and really strained resources. Has the government responded to any of this in terms of justifying why they are opening the doors to these, you know, few dozen white South Africans at a time when they're closing the doors to all these other people? Federal officials are pretty united in ignoring that question.

And they're pretty united in saying that they believe that there is this alleged mass genocide happening, particularly to the white minority in South Africa, and that the United States stands against genocide and stands against that kind of violence and will help get those people out if they want. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that more white South Africans can apply for refugee status and might be brought to the United States in the coming months. Again, at a time in which you have hundreds of people from all over the world, the Afghani refugees, many of those individuals who even assisted US armed forces in the war and it's not safe for them to stay in Afghanistan, had plane tickets, had were ready to board a plane to the United States, had often even

waited years for this opportunity and now that's been completely put on pause. Danielle Pletka You know, of all the things that Trump has done, I would say this is probably the purest form of white identity politics, of which he is an expert practitioner. And the idea that there was genocide of white farmers in South Africa is something that came from the kind of molten core of Trump's MAGA base. It's been around for a long time and Trump has been quite fixated on it for a long time. So this is something that really resonates with his base. And he was sticking to his guns today. He kept on repeating over and over again

that there was this tremendous amount of death among white farmers in South Africa, where the evidence shows that the majority of victims of crime in South Africa are black. OK, well, we're going to take a quick break and more on this when we get back. I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.

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What is a path you almost took but didn't? On our latest episode, how to ask the magical questions that'll make your party sparkle. Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR. And we're back. So it was clear to me in this meeting, this is not the first time President Trump has thought about this issue. Can I just ask, do we know why or how the president

became so fixated on what he sees as the plight of white South Africans? Look, this story, which is not backed by facts, that white South African farmers are being killed in large numbers has been circulating in right-wing media for many years. It started, I think, for the president by watching a Tucker Carlson show where this story was repeated and the president has fixated on it and has been on it ever since. Now, he also has some prominent white South Africans around him. Elon Musk is one of them. So maybe he was also hearing this from them. Elon Musk has retweeted or reposted on his own social media platform some of these stories. But it also fits in

with the bigger Trump message of white identity politics that, you know, what we just heard is that the refugee program has been shut down for people all over the world except this one exception for 59 white South African farmers. So this is part and parcel with Trump's white identity politics that he has practiced for his whole political career. Well, this seemed like a pretty tough assignment for President Ramaphosa, right? I mean, this whole thing kind of unravels and you can kind of see on his face.

It didn't seem to me that he expected like videos to be played and Trump to be showing him these documents and things like that. How do you feel like it went from his perspective, Mara? I thought it went better than it went for Zelensky. I think he was prepared for something, some kind of a Zelensky style ambush. He was very calm throughout.

He didn't try to argue with the president. As he said, he said, if there was African farmers genocide, these three gentlemen, he pointed to these three white gentlemen who were either members of his government or big supporters or champion golfers who are Trump's friends, wouldn't be here with me today. And what I thought was really interesting about the way the South African delegation handled these charges was to say, you know what? We do have a crime problem in this country. We need to work with you, our great partner on this.

We need tech. We need Starlinks. We need all sorts of other kind of crime-fighting machinery that can help us here. So he kept his eye on his goal, which is to get investment from the United States in South Africa. And it's very possible that, you know, a lot of what happens in the White House is performative and theater. Then they go behind closed doors. And I think if Donald Trump thinks that it's in the interest of the United States to make some business deals with South Africa, he will while publicly talking about this conspiracy theory about white farmer genocide.

Well, Amanda, there was other immigration news overnight. I want to turn to that for a second now. It involves migrants being removed from the United States and sent to South Sudan. Can you explain what's happening there? Right. So, you know, you might remember that the Trump administration is really focusing on these so-called third party countries, third countries. So taking someone that they want to deport from the United States, but their home country won't take them back, send them to an alternative location.

And what occurred last night was several lawyers caught wind that their clients were potentially being sent within a matter of hours to South Sudan. And these were not South Sudanese individuals. They were in part from Central and South America, also Asian countries as well. So going to South Sudan would have been a drastic change. A federal judge did a few emergency hearings last night to kind of question whether or not a court order that he had issued had been violated by rapidly removing about eight migrants to South Sudan.

And earlier today in a hearing, he said that the Trump administration's decision to do that did violate his court order and that there needs to be a clearer, more time due process for people to contest their removals to these third countries before they're taken there. And a part of that is what people call a credible fear screening, giving someone an opportunity to say that they might face particular danger or violence by being sent to a completely different destination. Well, Hamanan, can I just ask you, these are people who are being sent to these countries. Are they going to be imprisoned in these countries? We certainly saw that when they were sent to El Salvador.

You know, we don't really know. And the Trump administration is also refusing to say if South Sudan is actually the final destination for these migrants. You know, we know that a flight took off, and some of them had been told on paper that they might get sent to South Sudan. At one point, South Africa was almost a destination as well. We have seen the government of South Sudan and officials there

say that they have not stricken a deal with the United States for this and they are not ready to serve as a third country for the US looking to remove people to. So kind of the conditions about what people might find themselves in once they get there are really unknown, unlike some of the other deals, particularly with Salvador as you mentioned where there is a primary destination and that is the notorious prison sickle. Is it fair to say that this is starting to fit into a trend of the Trump administration kind of pushing the bounds of his immigration authority when it comes to these court orders? Yes

it definitely is you know know, you are seeing individual fights happening in these district courts, you know, aiming to stop the use of various administrative powers. And then the Trump administration is trying to find ways to go about them, either by using other agencies such as the Pentagon and the Defense Department to remove people instead of Homeland Security, or finding other countries or other destinations to take people to, or finding the spots and the places where they're still able to do these kinds of removals.

And so it really becomes a question if they are trying to violate the court orders or not. So far, there have not been rulings of contempt, but enough judges have kind of warned that if they keep going, that might be where we end up. All right. Well, let's leave it there for now. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ximena Bustillo and I cover immigration. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.

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