On Monday, December 8, 2025, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a forceful warning at the African National Congress (ANC) conference in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg. He declared that persistent ideologies of white racial superiority threaten not only South Africa’s fragile post-apartheid unity but also its sovereignty and international standing. His remarks come at a time when the global spotlight has turned once again to the country’s complex racial politics, ignited in part by recent controversial statements and actions from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Speaking to delegates of the ANC—the party that led the fight against apartheid and has governed South Africa since 1994—Ramaphosa did not mince words. “Some in our society still adhere to notions of racial superiority and seek to maintain racial privilege,” he said, according to Reuters. He emphasized that these attitudes “conveniently align with wider notions of white supremacy and white victimhood fed by false claims of the persecution of white Afrikaners in our country.”
These comments were not made in a vacuum. Just two weeks earlier, President Trump had boycotted the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Johannesburg, alleging—without evidence—that South Africa mistreats its white minority. Trump claimed that white farmers were “being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” The U.S. administration was reportedly furious when South Africa, undeterred, secured a G20 declaration anyway. As a result, Washington announced that South Africa would be excluded from the next G20 summit, to be held in the United States in 2026, and instead invited Poland to the first meetings of its G20 presidency later this month.
According to The Guardian, these claims of a so-called “white genocide” in South Africa have circulated for years in far-right and white supremacist circles abroad. Activists have sought political support from some U.S. Republicans and European right-wing groups, amplifying a narrative that has been widely debunked by experts and South African authorities. While there have been horrific, high-profile murders of white farmers and their families in recent decades, there is no evidence that they are systematically targeted because of their race or that they suffer disproportionately from South Africa’s high violent crime rate.
Ramaphosa stressed that the propagation of these false claims is not just a matter of international image—it has real-world consequences. “These false claims have real implications for our sovereignty, international relations and national security,” he stated, urging a global campaign to debunk such narratives. “It is essential that we counter this narrative and defeat this agenda … This is a campaign that needs to be launched not only in our country, but globally as well, particularly to address the notions that some globally are perpetrating about what is happening in South Africa.”
The ANC conference was not solely focused on international tensions. Domestically, Ramaphosa highlighted the ongoing struggle against the legacy of apartheid and the need for continued transformation and redress. He pointed out that opposition to these policies “conveniently aligns with wider notions of white supremacy and white victimhood, fed by false claims of the persecution of white Afrikaners in our country,” as reported by Creamer Media.
The diplomatic fallout from Trump’s remarks has been swift and significant. In February 2025, Trump cited these same allegations when cutting U.S. development aid to South Africa. The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio further fanned the flames by claiming, “The South African government’s appetite for racism and tolerance for violence against its Afrikaner citizens have become embedded as core domestic policies.” The U.S. has also announced that it will admit just 7,500 refugees this year, most of them white South Africans, while closing its refugee program to people fleeing war and persecution elsewhere.
South Africa, for its part, is acutely aware of the economic stakes. The United States remains its third-largest export market after the European Union and China. However, 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, according to Reuters. “At the same time, we have had to accelerate diversification of our export markets.”
Economic tensions have thus become intertwined with the broader diplomatic rift. South Africa’s efforts to diversify its trading partners have gained urgency, as the country seeks to reduce its dependence on the U.S. market in the face of punitive tariffs and political hostility.
The context of these disputes is deeply rooted in South Africa’s history. Afrikaners, who make up about 4% of the population—roughly 2.5 million people—are descendants of Dutch colonizers and French Huguenots who settled in South Africa in the late 17th century. They led the apartheid regime from 1948, which violently repressed the Black majority while maintaining white privilege. Despite the end of apartheid more than three decades ago, white South Africans remain, on average, far wealthier than Black South Africans. According to a 2017 government land audit cited by The Guardian, white people owned 72% of private agricultural land.
Ramaphosa’s call for a global initiative to counter false narratives about white persecution is as much about defending South Africa’s post-apartheid project as it is about navigating a turbulent international environment. The president underscored that “the vehement opposition by some groups to our policies of transformation and redress conveniently align with wider notions of white supremacy and white victimhood, fed by false claims of the persecution of white Afrikaners in our country. The propaganda of these false claims has real implications for our sovereignty, international relations and national security.”
As South Africa faces mounting pressure from both domestic and foreign actors, the stakes could hardly be higher. The battle over the country’s image abroad is inseparable from the ongoing struggle to fulfill the promises of 1994—promises of equality, justice, and reconciliation. It is a challenge that, as Ramaphosa made clear this week, will require both national resolve and international solidarity to overcome.
Against this backdrop, the ANC conference was a vivid reminder that the ghosts of the past continue to shape South Africa’s present. As delegates sang and debated in Boksburg, the world watched closely, waiting to see how the country would respond to an increasingly hostile global environment and the persistent specter of racial division. For now, South Africa’s leaders are making it clear: the fight for unity and sovereignty is far from over.
