JOHANNESBURG — "All in all it was awful but it could have been worse," was how one South African newspaper summed up President Cyril Ramaphosa's extraordinary Oval Office meeting with President Trump on Wednesday.
Many South Africans — including members of the government delegation visiting Washington — had feared a repeat of February's heated exchange between Trump and and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But despite what another newspaper called "serious provocation" by Trump — which included the dramatic moment he asked to dim the lights and played a lengthy video montage purporting to prove what Trump falsely claimed was a "genocide" against South African white farmers — Ramaphosa kept his cool.
The South African leader, who was a protégé of Nelson Mandela, has experience with intense negotiations. He was one of the key mediators in the talks that ended apartheid in 1994.
Most of the country's media as well as many social media users are praising Ramaphosa for remaining calm and polite throughout what's widely being called the "ambush" by Trump, though some wished he had hit back harder.
"Who among us did not also secretly yearn to see Ramaphosa fight back a little more?" writer Rebecca Davis asked in the Daily Maverick newspaper.
Ramaphosa himself tried to put a positive spin on things at a press briefing later on Wednesday. He said behind closed doors, at the lunch that followed the Oval Office drama, things had gone well. Trump might still attend a summit of the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations in Johannesburg later this year, he said, adding they had also had good trade talks.
"I know that many South Africans were filled with concern and fear that we will have a 'Z' moment," the president said, apparently referring to Zelenskyy, "and all that did not ensue."
He added that he was sorry to disappoint the South African press corps who had traveled to Washington and wanted to see some "drama." That prompted one reporter to say: "Mr. President … I don't know what constitutes drama in your book, but that was very dramatic." Another reporter told Ramaphosa he deserved a stiff drink.
Debunking disinformation
Despite the South African delegation's attempts to explain the facts to the U.S. leader, Trump again and again repeated a right-wing conspiracy theory that there is systematic persecution and "genocide" of white South Africans, using disinformation to support his allegations.
He misrepresented a video showing a protest, where people placed white crosses in a field to commemorate a farmer and his wife who were murdered in a 2020 home robbery, as a "burial site." South African news site News24 said there are no bodies at the site and the number of crosses do not relate to the number of killings.
Trump also played clips of two controversial South African opposition politicians — who in no way speak for the government — singing songs from the struggle against apartheid, including one called "Kill the Boer," which means Afrikaner or farmer.
One of the politicians, firebrand Julius Malema, heads a flailing opposition party that won just over 9.5% of the vote in last year's elections. Trump asked why he wasn't arrested. In fact, Malema was taken to court on charges of hate speech for singing the song at rallies, and the constitutional court ruled the singing of the song was protected by freedom of speech.
Malema seems to have delighted in his 15-minutes of Oval Office fame, posting on X: "A group of older men gathered in Washington to gossip about me."
Trump later handed Ramaphosa a bunch of printed articles that he said showed "death, death, horrible death." News outlets in South Africa, as well as the Agence France-Presse news agency, studied the articles and found some were from partisan blogs and unsubstantiated online sources.
One article Trump held up, saying it was about "white farmers being burned," was in fact about the Democratic Republic of Congo.
About those golfers
Whatever one's take on the meeting, it has dominated social media feeds. White South African right-wing groups — and MAGA commentators — applauded Trump for repeating their talking points on race relations. Some far-left groups denounced Ramaphosa for bringing white South African businessmen and golf stars along to the meeting.
Ramaphosa and Trump are both avid golfers, and the presence of former world No. 1 Ernie Els and two-time U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen was a tactic the South African team hoped would defuse tensions at the meeting. Els is a personal friend of Trump's and is reported to have helped Ramaphosa get the White House meeting.
Also present was South Africa's richest man, business mogul Johann Rupert, also white and Afrikaans and a friend of both presidents.
Rupert won some praise from South African media for telling Trump "it's not only white farmers" who are victims of violent crime, "it's across the board," and stating that non-whites are in fact the biggest victims. Ramaphosa's white agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, also challenged Trump, telling him most white farmers wanted to remain in South Africa.
But the golfers angered many.
Els seemed to support Trump's narrative of white persecution, referring to the apartheid era but adding: "I don't think two wrongs makes a right."
He also thanked the U.S. for supporting South Africa during its war with Angola — but as social media users were quick to point out, that support had been for the old apartheid regime.
A Daily Maverick journalist wrote that the men were talented golfers but "what the hell do they have to do with international relations?" Reporters asked Ramaphosa after the meeting if the golfers should not have been better prepped. He defended them as patriots, but admitted they could have been.
What is particularly galling to many though, is Trump's derisive treatment of the head of state of a constitutional democracy. Several local newspaper articles pointed out he doesn't treat authoritarian leaders with dubious human rights records like he treated the South African president.
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