President Donald Trump has hosted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa for White House talks Wednesday at a moment when relations between the two countries are at a nadir, with Trump laying into South African officials on widely rejected charges of allowing a “genocide” against minority white farmers.
South African officials have strongly pushed back against Trump’s accusation and Ramaphosa sought the meeting to set the record straight and salvage his country’s relationship with the United States. The bilateral relationship is at its lowest point since South Africa enforced its apartheid system of racial segregation, which ended in 1994.