Trump confronts South African president with conspiracy claims

SACRAMENTO, the United States - US President Donald Trump confronted visiting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday with conspiracy theories on "white genocide" in South Africa, which Ramaphosa firmly denied.

During their meeting in the Oval Office, Trump accused South Africa of "white genocide" and unfair land seizures, and then unexpectedly presented a video and a stack of printed news articles which he said proved his allegations.

Ramaphosa, who arrived in Washington in hopes of improving trade terms and easing bilateral tensions, rejected Trump's assertions during the meeting. He refuted the notion that white South Africans are fleeing the country due to racist policies. He said there was crime in South Africa and the majority of victims were Black.

News outlets were shocked by Trump's rudeness, saying most of the information that he used during the meeting to try to prove that "white genocide" was happening in South Africa had "repeatedly been disproven".

"Of the laundry list of conspiracy theories brought out at Trump's meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa today, almost everything has been debunked. Some South Africans have said that they believe that the information is 'AfriForum propaganda' -- a White Afrikaner lobby group criticized as being a White nationalist group," the CNN reported.

The clash came at a time of strained relations between the two countries. Since Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act into law in January, Trump has criticized the land reform law for "discriminating" against the country's white people.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly criticized South Africa, most notably by canceling the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding and claiming that a "genocide" against white South Africans is underway, an allegation denied by the South African government.

In March, the United States expelled then South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, further straining their relations. The expulsion came after Rasool addressed a webinar organized by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, commenting on the Trump administration.

"What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency at home and I think I've illustrated abroad as well," Rasool said during the webinar.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Trump would not participate in the upcoming meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) leaders in South Africa later this year.

"We decided not to participate in this year's G20 hosted by South Africa, either at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or at the level of the president, and this was largely due to some of these issues that they put on their agenda and which, as we think, they do not reflect the priorities of this administration," Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

South Africa has pushed back against the Trump administration's accusations, saying the executive order of freezing aid "lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa's profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid".

"We are concerned by what seems to be a campaign of misinformation and propaganda aimed at misrepresenting our great nation. It is disappointing to observe that such narratives seem to have found favor among decision-makers in the United States of America," said the country's Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation in a statement in February.