Donald Trump has ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a meeting at the White House by playing videos which he claimed pertained to allegations of genocide in South Africa.
The US president was hosting the South African leader, who sat quietly while the footage was played, and Mr Ramaphosa later said: “I’d like to know where that is because this [the videos] I’ve never seen”.
Videos were shown of South African officials allegedly calling for violence against white farmers.
Mr Trump said at the meeting: “These are people that are officials and they’re saying… kill the white farmer and take their land.”
The US president also showed reporters a number of news articles which he said were from the last few days of “death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death”.
Mr Trump said: “Look at this [headline] – white South African couple say that they were attacked violently.”
He added of another article: “Here’s burial sites all over the place, these are all white farmers that are being buried.”
And flicking through the articles, he said they were of people who “recently got killed, and I don’t know how it can get any worse”.
Ramaphosa responded: “What you saw, the speeches that were being made, that is not government policy. We have a multi-party democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves and political parties to adhere to various policies. And in many cases or in some cases, those policies do not go along with government policy.
“Our government policy is completely, completely against what he [a person in the video montage] was saying. Even in the parliament. And they are a small minority party which is allowed to exist in terms of our constitution.”
Source: Sky News
