Like a Bond villain startling guests with noxious gas, the president pushed his ‘white genocide\u2019 delusion to Cyril Ramaphosa<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew he was a bore and boor. Now we have learned that Donald Trump<\/a> is an honorary Boer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When he turned his attention to South Africa<\/a> on Wednesday, it may come as no surprise that the US president \u2013 who has been sued for discriminating against Black apartment seekers, called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, pushed the false claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, referred to Haiti and African nations as \u201cshithole countries\u201d, and blamed an air crash on DEI \u2013 was rooting for the whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump had laid a trap for South African president Cyril Ramaphosa<\/a> in his gold and gaudy Oval Office. After 20 minutes of relative pleasantries, Trump\u2019s delusion that a white genocide is happening in South Africa inevitably reared its ugly head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ramaphosa said \u201clistening to the stories\u201d of South Africans would help his counterpart better understand. But then, with his audience captive, Trump turned sinister and ordered his staff to dim the lights and activate a big screen. He was like a Bond villain startling guests with noxious gas or a doomsday machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Natalie Harp, a White House aide known as the \u201chuman printer\u201d because she prints out favourable newspaper cuttings for Trump\u2019s attention, swung into action. She plugged a laptop in the TV and played a video that showed South African opposition politicians Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema singing apartheid-era songs about shooting Boers, a term that refers to farmers or Afrikaners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then came drone footage purportedly showing Afrikaner graves marked by white crosses. Then Trump brandished a sheaf of newspaper cuttings about recent killings in South Africa, muttering bleakly: \u201cDeath, death, death, horrible death.\u201d Between the two men loomed a bust of Winston Churchill, who covered the Boer war as a reporter and was held as a prisoner in Pretoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poor Ramaphosa had to sit and take it as the terrible truth dawned: he had been Zelenskyy\u2019d. The last time Trump pulled an ambush like this<\/a>, his weapon was the vice-president, JD Vance, bullying and berating the leader of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This time, Vance was content to remain silent, wearing an absurdly long red tie and glowering with menace like an attack dog straining at the leash. Joining him on the sofa were defence secretary Pete Hegseth, looking gormless, and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, looking smug. Behind them stood South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, brimming variously with boredom and contempt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Ramaphosa had learned lessons from Trump\u2019s attempt to turn diplomacy into a reality TV series. France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron, Britain\u2019s Keir Starmer and Canada\u2019s Mark Carney have all run the gauntlet of the TV cameras in the Oval Office, expertly serving up a sycophancy sandwich that combines craven flattery with a bit of gristle in the middle \u2013 a willingness to stick up for their own country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, Ramaphosa knows Trump\u2019s type and was not going to be intimated by white supremacy. He was born to a police sergeant and a domestic worker and grew up under the violent regime of racial apartheid. He was arrested after leading a student protest at college and served 11 months in solitary confinement. He founded a national mineworkers\u2019 union and became an acolyte of Nelson Mandela in the liberation struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He flattered Trump by calling South Africa\u2019s economy \u201ctiny\u201d compared with the US\u2019s \u2013 but who is the bigger man?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It must have been hard for Ramaphosa to take when Trump, droning on about the persecution of white farmers, asserted: \u201cNow I will say, apartheid: terrible. That was the biggest threat. That was reported all the time. This is sort of the opposite of apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Ramaphosa had prepared a soft ambush of his own. Starmer might have brought an invitation to meet the king<\/a>, but Ramaphosa knew that Trump loves nothing more than golf, so he brought the gift of a big book about South African golf courses. More importantly, he had a white cavalry including agriculture minister John Steenhuisen and golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was also South African\u2019s richest person, luxury goods magnate Johann Rupert, both whitesplaining and wealthsplaining \u2013 the two languages that Trump understands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have many deaths, but it\u2019s across the board \u2013 not just white farmers,\u201d Rupert said, saying the country needs technological help from Musk\u2019s Starlink, and even recalling how much his wife loved JD Vance\u2019s book Hillbilly Elegy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump had failed to hector Ramaphosa into submission and, like a bully lashing out, took out his frustration on NBC reporter Peter Alexander, whom he branded a \u201cjerk\u201d for asking about his plan to accept<\/a> a $400m plane from Qatar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy did a country give an airplane to the United States air force?\u201d Trump asked rhetorically. \u201cSo they could help us out, because we need an Air Force One. That\u2019s what that idiot talks about, after viewing a thing where thousands of people are dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ramaphosa interjected: \u201cI\u2019m sorry I don\u2019t have a plane to give you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump, with a model plane on the table before him, responded: \u201cI wish you did. I would take it. If your country offered the United States air force a plane, I would take it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOK,\u201d Ramaphosa replied, trying to keep a straight face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Macron, Starmer and Carney before him, he had survived Washington\u2019s trial by television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n