South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called Donald Trump's policy of allowing white African-Americans to apply for refugee status in the US "racist", saying the US president was "truly uninformed" in a rare case of direct criticism.
Ramaphosa told the New York Times that last year's Oval Office meeting with the US leader, when Trump dimmed the lights and played a video that he falsely claimed showed there had been a "white genocide" in South Africa, was a "spectacle" and an "ambush".
"I just thought he was so uninformed, really uninformed", Ramaphosa said. "I realized that he was looking at South Africa through a completely, somewhat, foggy lens, without understanding the real damage that apartheid caused. In my opinion, he just ignored it."
Trump has targeted South Africa since he began his second term in office in January 2025. He has spread false accusations that the country's white minority is undergoing a "genocide" and that their land is being confiscated by the government.
In May, the US expanded refugee status to African Americans - who once ran the repressive apartheid minority government and who remain on average many times wealthier than black South Africans - while cutting its refugee program for people fleeing war and persecution, writes The Guardian.
Trump refused to attend the G20 leaders' meetings in Johannesburg in November and has barred South Africa from attending the US-hosted meeting in Miami later this year.
"I think the policy towards Afrikaners is racist", Ramaphosa said. "It's exactly this kind of racist behavior that we want to mitigate so that he sees the truth of the situation."
In a statement to the New York Times, the White House said Trump was drawing attention to "the horrific stories of Africans."
It said: "The South African government, at least, is not responding, but President Trump has a humanitarian heart. He will continue to tell the truth about these injustices."
Ramaphosa said: “"There is no genocide against white people and there is no land grabbing, of white people's land. And white farmers are not being driven out of the country and not being treated badly."
The South African president, who is expected to step down as head of the African National Congress party next year and as the country's leader in 2029, was unusually direct about Trump.
He said: "We are quite surprised by the attention he is paying us. We are a small country and we are not a threat to the United States."
