South Africa’s Ramaphosa has warned that rising ideas of white racial superiority are threatening the country’s post-apartheid unity and international relations. Speaking at an ANC conference, he urged global efforts to counter false narratives of “white persecution” circulating abroad.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday warned that ideas of white racial superiority pose a threat to South Africa’s post-apartheid unity, its sovereignty and its international ties. He urged global efforts to counter “false stories about white persecution,” speaking at an African National Congress (ANC) conference, the party that ended apartheid three decades ago.
“Some in our society still adhere to notions of racial superiority and seek to maintain racial privilege,” Ramaphosa said, noting that such views “conveniently align with wider notions of white supremacy and white victimhood fed by false claims of the persecution of white Afrikaners … in our country.”
His remarks come two weeks after US President Donald Trump boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg, claiming without evidence that South Africa mistreats its white minority and that white farmers were “being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated”. Washington later expressed anger that South Africa proceeded with the G20 declaration and said it would be excluded from the next summit in the US.
Despite being widely debunked, claims of a “genocide” against white South Africans have circulated for years in far-right and white supremacist circles abroad, where activists have sought political support from some US Republicans and European right-wing groups. In February, Trump cited these allegations when cutting development aid to South Africa.
“These false claims (have) … real implications for our sovereignty, international relations and national security,” Ramaphosa said, calling for a global campaign to counter them.
The US remains South Africa’s third-largest export destination after the EU and China. Trump’s administration has imposed a 30 percent import tariff on South African goods, despite Pretoria’s attempts to have it lowered. “Our government is continuing to engage the United States in negotiations to reach a trade agreement that benefits both countries,” Ramaphosa said. “At the same time, we have had to accelerate diversification of our export markets.”
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