Trump 'grills' Ramaphosa of South Africa in WH meeting

Washington, May 21 (IANS) US President Donald Trump on Wednesday "grilled" visiting President of South Africa, Cyril Cyril Ramaphosa, on the persecution of white farmers in his country with a video representation and news articles in a joint media interface at the White House.

At one point, Trump asked staff to dim the lights in the Oval Office and play a video that showed a man calling for killing white farmers and snatching their lands.

One clip apparently showed cars carrying bodies of killed farmers.

This public White House grilling of a visiting foreign leader at the White House was similar to the clash between President Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance on the one side and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in February. The two sides had called off the rest of the scheduled meetings for the day.

However, the South Africans stayed and went on to go through the rest of their meetings.

President Ramaphosa, who had sought the meeting, pushed back on the allegations levelled by President Trump, to which the latter said, "But why wouldn't you arrest that man? That man said, Kill the white farmers. Kill the white farmers. And then he danced, and he's dancing, dancing."

"I'm not sure, but I think if somebody got up in Parliament and started saying, kill a certain group of people that he would be in, he would be arrested very quickly," President Trump said.

"That man is going all over South Africa, and that's not a small party in a stadium that holds 100,000 people, and I hardly saw an empty seat. That's a lot of people, that's a lot of representation."

The South African President had sought to explain away the man in the video as a minor Opposition party figure and that these were fringe elements in South Africa.

"Those crosses," President Trump said of the clip showing cars with bodies and crosses, "we have dead white people, dead white farmers, mostly. And you take a look at Australia, they're being inundated, and we're being inundated with people that want to get out, and their farm is valueless... And this is a very serious situation."

Trump has suspended foreign aid to South Africa and has ordered speedy processing of refugee status for white South Africans.

Picture Courtesy: IANS