00:00This is Apropos. An extraordinary new refugee policy welcoming white Afrikaner farmers who the Trump administration claims are persecuted will be high on the agenda when the South African president is hosted at the White House this Wednesday.
00:19Both white and black farmers and even conservative white Afrikaner groups are debunking the Trump administration's genocide and land seizure claims that led the U.S. to cut all financial aid to South Africa.
00:33With the details, here's Yinka Oyotari.
00:36At this agriculture show in South Africa, it's the country's deteriorating relations with the U.S. that are weighing heavily on the minds of farmers.
00:44President Ramaphosa will be looking to reset ties during talks with his U.S. counterpart, who has made false claims that white farmers in South Africa are being killed in a genocide.
00:56The country's agriculture minister hopes Ramaphosa will debunk those allegations in the Oval Office.
01:01I really hope that during the upcoming visit to Washington, the president is going to be able to put the facts before his counterparts. There's no genocide taking place.
01:11Ramaphosa's visit comes just days after a group of white South Africans were welcomed into the U.S. as refugees.
01:19That move triggered by a new law issued by Pretoria, allowing the state to seize land without compensation when it's in the public interest.
01:27In a bid to appease Trump, the South African president is expected to call for an independent investigation into the genocide claims.
01:35A place where South Africa does believe there is a very real genocide is Gaza.
01:39We condemn in the strongest terms the appalling slaughter and genocide of the people of Palestine that is being perpetrated in Gaza and the West Bank.
01:55During talks, Ramaphosa could try to point the finger at the U.S. for its ongoing support for Israel.
02:01Some analysts believe it's South Africa's decision to bring genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice in 2023 that initially sent relations between Washington and Pretoria into freefall.
02:14In recent months, South Africa has seen its ambassador to the United States expelled.
02:19Meanwhile, American aid has been halted.
02:21Talks with the U.S. president will also be an opportunity for Pretoria to propose a new trade deal with Washington, its second-largest trading partner.
02:30Discussions set to take place under the watchful eye of South African-born billionaire and key advisor to Trump, Elon Musk, who is perhaps our post's loudest critic.
02:40Well, for more, we're joined now by Ray Hartley, Research Director at the Brand Terrace Foundation.
02:47Ray, thanks so much for being with us on the programme this evening.
02:51South Africa, it has really been in the crosshairs since Donald Trump returned to the White House,
02:56but he also appears to have floated this idea about offering asylum to white South African farmers as far back as 2019.
03:04I think if we go back to the final month or so of the election campaign, Elon Musk wanted to invest in South Africa.
03:20He wanted to bring Starlink to South Africa, their large unserviced areas in the rural parts of South Africa.
03:26But more than that, he wanted to set up a sort of African hub for Starlink in South Africa, using the financial markets and the tech skills and so on.
03:38And he was asked to concede almost a third of his company to empowerment partners in terms of South African law.
03:46And I think he took great offence at that.
03:49And it started a series of tweets, I suppose we still call them tweets, on X, where he started to focus in on South Africa.
04:02It's got these laws, they're race-based.
04:05And then eventually it went to the issue of farm killings in South Africa, which is a very emotive issue in South Africa,
04:13and where there's quite a strong lobby against farm killings.
04:19And he picked up on that.
04:20And that sort of morphed then into this narrative about a sort of genocidal assault on farmers.
04:30And Trump picked up on it when he was president and issued this, you know,
04:36signed off this instruction basically to allow South Africans refugee status, white Afrikaner South Africans refugee status, because of the farm killings.
04:50So I think that's the story of how it sort of unfolded and developed into what it is today.
04:57I do think that, you know, I mean, I think the minister is correct, that to call it a targeted genocide is not the, you know, it's not the correct description.
05:11I think farmers are inherently isolated and easy targets for criminals compared to people in more concentrated urban areas.
05:22And South Africa has a very large violent crime problem.
05:27And this has expressed itself on the farms.
05:30But the murder rate across the country, tragically, is really high, including in urban areas.
05:39So to suggest that this particular community is targeted for murder, I think, is not entirely accurate.
05:49And as we saw in Yinka's report, those kind of claims are being ridiculed by many people in South Africa.
05:55If we look ahead to this meeting between the South African president and the U.S. president for Wednesday, it is scheduled.
06:02There seems to be some concern at home about how things might go in the Oval Office, that things might get a bit confrontational.
06:09What are you expecting?
06:11Do you think that Ramaphosa is going to pull Donald Trump up about those claims, all of the comments he's been making about so-called genocide?
06:19Yeah, I think that Ramaphosa tends to wear several hats.
06:24There was a clip of him that you showed earlier, where he was at a party meeting, you know, with a whole lot of party acolytes and so on.
06:36And there you go, a very militant message.
06:38But actually, he's also got this other capacity, which is to be a sort of charmer and a negotiator and is very famously the, you know, one of the key parties to settling the South African constitutional order for the democratic era in the early 1990s.
07:00So he can be that kind of operator, and he can be quite disarming as well.
07:06And I expect that, I think the country's hoping, let's say, that that is the Ramaphosa that pitches up at the White House and mends these bridges.
07:17Because the exports to the US are actually pretty vital to the economy.
07:22We have, you know, a very struggling manufacturing sector in South Africa, and many of those exports go to the US and earn valuable foreign currency.
07:35And with our current economic problems, you know, we really can't afford to alienate the US and have these 30% tariffs.
07:42And Ray, you've said previously, in relation to this, this row, that sanctions and export tariffs might be inevitable at this stage.
07:51Do you think, though, that Ramaphosa might be able to pull the situation back from there?
07:55Are there areas where the two leaders might find common ground?
07:58They share some personality traits, we might assume, from how you've been describing the South African president.
08:04Yeah, I'm hoping that they're going to, you know, that they're not going there to go and make a grandstanding political statement against Trump.
08:14Because I think that would be really very foolish.
08:18So one expects them to be going there to achieve a positive result.
08:22And on the table, you know, could well be, you know, offering a way for Starlink to enter South Africa without this onerous empowerment requirement.
08:37That might sort of pour a bit of cold water on Elon Musk's attitude to South Africa.
08:44And hopefully also to, you know, put something on the table when it comes to mutual, you know, trade, what we could be buying from the US.
08:58Gas has been mentioned because we have a major gas requirement arising as the Mozambican gas fields deplete here.
09:07So importing liquefied natural gas from the US might be an option.
09:12There could be other trade options in, you know, agricultural equipment and all kinds of other areas.
09:20So we're hoping that somehow there will be at least a reduction of the 30% tariff.
09:27I think that would be a very big win.
09:30But even just an improvement in the relationship, the stabilisation of the relationship, a good photo opportunity,
09:38and not a, shall we say, a Trump-Zelensky-style meltdown in the Oval Office.
09:46We don't want to see that.
09:47That would really be the worst case scenario.
09:49Do you think that Ramaphosa is going to come under pressure because of the diplomatic engagement that South Africa has undertaken with Iran and Hamas?
09:57I think that's a very big problem for South Africa.
10:03The previous foreign minister was a very pro-Iranian, very pro-Hamas.
10:10Shortly after the October 7th assault on Israel, she took a phone call with the head of Hamas.
10:17She then travelled to Iran and met the leader, the late leader of Iran, the then president.
10:27And this all looked, you know, it was very bad optically for South Africa at that time.
10:34And also inside the country.
10:37I don't think it was entirely well received.
10:39So, you know, he's got his sort of, they've appointed a new foreign minister who is supposedly redirecting us.
10:51And we've toned down a lot of this sort of bilateral relationship with Iran.
10:57There aren't all these ministers visiting each other and all that kind of stuff going on.
11:02And hopefully we can find a way to signal that we're stepping into a slightly more neutral position there.
11:11And Donald Trump, he's been very critical of, you know, South African foreign policy, as we're saying,
11:17but particularly the decision to take Israel to the UN's top court to accuse it of genocide.
11:22Do you think that Ramaphosa is going to go there in his conversation with Donald Trump to perhaps accuse him of turning a blind eye to what's been happening in Gaza?
11:32Yeah, I think that, you know, there have been interesting developments over the last week or so.
11:39And also more recently today, the U.S. has kind of seen, seems to be a little annoyed at the moment with the current offensive that's taking place there.
11:50And I imagine that it could be an opportunity for Ramaphosa, again, to find a way.
12:00I think withdrawing the case would be such a major climb down and an embarrassment that it's probably very difficult for him to do that.
12:08I mean, that would be the easy way to do it.
12:11But there are other measures that can be taken, for example, restoring diplomatic contact, because we withdrew our ambassador from Israel, and we asked that the Israeli ambassador leave South Africa.
12:24So whereas all the countries of the Middle East and Russia and China and everybody have their embassies in Tel Aviv, we don't.
12:31We're sort of an outlier, you know, on the sort of extreme end there.
12:35So it's possible for us to maybe, you know, think about restoring those diplomatic ties.
12:42And it's possible to have those ties continue and have the case continue as well.
12:49And then look for an opportunity for us to be slightly more even-handed.
12:56Ray, we'll have to leave it there for now.
12:58But thank you so much for being with us this evening.
13:00We do appreciate your time on the program.
13:02That's Ray Hartley, Research Director at the Brenthurst Foundation.
