South Africa: Cyril Ramaphosa to meet with Donald Trump in US next week

It is difficult to hide: relations between South Africa and the United States are strained and have been so for months.

Since Donald Trump took office again as president of the United States, the two countries have repeatedly clashed over the US plan to resettle white South African farmers, which Donald Trump claims face "racial discrimination" in South Africa.

And in March, Washington expelled the South African ambassador Ebrahim Rasool over critical comments he had made on the subject of the Trump administration.

Could a meeting however help improve the situation?

Late on Wednesday, Pretoria announced that South African president Cyril Ramaphosa would travel to Washington next week. On the agenda is a meeting with Donald Trump.

While the South African presidency did not further comment on the issues to be discussed by the two presidents, the tensions surrounding the white farmers' refugee status, which the US granted earlier this week, are likely to be included in the talks.

The US welcomed 59 white South Africans as refugees this Monday, the start of what the Trump administration said is a larger relocation plan for minority Afrikaner farmers who Trump has claimed are being persecuted in their homeland because of their race.

South Africa denies the allegations and says whites in the majority Black country are not being singled out for persecution.

No evidence of "genocide" of white farmers

The Republican president has singled out South Africa over what the US calls racist laws against whites and has accused the government of “fueling” violence against white farmers.

The South African government says the relatively small number of killings of white farmers should be condemned but are part of the country’s problems with violent crime and are not racially motivated.

Trump said Monday that there was “a genocide taking place” against white farmers that was being ignored by international media.

This claim has previously however been discredited, most recently so by a South African court ruling in February.

The US criticism of what it calls South Africa’s racist, anti-white laws appears to refer to South Africa’s affirmative action laws that advance opportunities for Black people, and a new land expropriation law that gives the government power to take private land without compensation.

Although the government says the land law is not a confiscation tool and refers to unused land that can be redistributed for the public good, some Afrikaner groups say it could allow their land to be seized and redistributed to some of the country’s Black majority.