Following President Cyril Ramaphosa; ‘s visit to the US and calmly sitting through a high-pressure dialogue with the US president Donald Trump. The United States President has publicly attacked EFF leader Julius Malema, saying he should be arrested for inciting violence and racial slurs.
In the meeting at the Oval Office in Washington, Trump brought up Malema’s chanting of old struggle slogans and played the videos of Malema shouting “Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer” at rallies. He rejected South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s argument that there’s no genocide against White Afrikaners. “We have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they’re coming to the United States,” Trump said. “Generally, they’re white farmers fleeing South Africa.”
Ramaphosa said his party, the ANC, and his government, were opposed to Malema’s utterances but tolerated it because the South African Constitution allowed for free political expression. “We are completely opposed to that.”
Businessman Johann Rupert who was also present told Trump that crime affected all South Africans, not just white farmers. He called on South African-born billionaire Elon Musk to invest in local policing by offering Starlink satellite internet services to the police. Democratic Alliance leader and Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said his party joined forces with Ramaphosa to keep Malema’s EFF and Jacob Zuma’s MK party out of power through the GNU.
Ramaphosa pleaded with Trump to continue supporting the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allows South African goods to enter the US tax-free. AGOA has helped secure more than 500,000 jobs and supports over 600 American businesses that operate in South Africa.
“The trade relations are the most important. That’s what brought us here. We want to come out of the United States with a really good trade deal and investment promotion,” he said.
Trump also created uncertainty about whether the United States would attend the G20 Summit in Johannesburg in November.
An unbothered Malela said, ‘no significant amount of intelligent evidence produced’ about a so-called white genocide. “A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me. No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about white genocide,” he said. “We will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency.”
Cece Smith 