CC-Transcript

• 00:00Donald Trump is talking about genocide in South Africa. Let’s be really clear here. There is absolutely, positively no credible human rights organization in South Africa or anywhere in the world that says that there’s a genocide taking place in South Africa. So the response to President Ramaphosa has to only be one. There is no genocide to the bilateral partnership between the US and South Africa is incredibly important for both sides of the Atlantic on security, on the economy, on trade. We’ve got to do things to bridge this gap, both in the facts and in the material relationship between the two countries. Well, President Trump brought to the Oval Office the facts that he wanted to underscore at least what was presented as fact, a video with monitors that had been rolled in and edited together for those in the Oval Office to see in person printed handouts of stories in which he said they described horrible death of white South Africans. Knowing that, it did seem that a certain amount of this was staged and knowing as well, Mr. Ambassador, that Cyril Ramaphosa, while not in the presidential role, was in the South African government at the time you were serving as ambassador. So you do know the players here. How did he conduct himself? Did he do well? Well, I’ve known President Ramaphosa ever since he was a Labour leader in the country when I first visited in 1991. President Ramaphosa did everything that he could to maintain his composure and not only his personal dignity, but the dignity of the nation that he represents. But it’s really hard when you’re sitting across from Donald Trump and he’s laying out facts with the propaganda. The film that he showed comes from an organization called Afriforum that’s known to be aligned with the most extreme fringe right wing elements, not only in South Africa but in the U.S., Australia and other places. They are adjacent to people who have been identified as neo Nazis. These are questionable characters. You should also understand that the black South African who was in the video exhorting violence against white Afrikaners is another fringe character who is not in the government, who Cyril Ramaphosa in the ANC soundly defeated in the last elections and who has no credible power in the country. So it’s rhetoric, no fact. All propaganda. White Afrikaners who make up less than 8% of the population, represent less than 2% of the murder victims in South Africa. Furthermore, that small Afrikaner population also happened to be some of the largest landowners in a country that has real asymmetries of economic inclusion. Those are the things that South Africans are trying to solve for with the partnership of the US through trade, through hundreds of thousands of jobs that are reliant on the African Growth and Opportunity Act that I helped to renegotiate. That’s up for renegotiation now. And that Donald Trump and the American people should be something in a fashion that helps people along the supply chain in America, consumers in America, and workers in South Africa. This is really helpful context, Ambassador, I’m sure you saw that Elon Musk was in the Oval Office. We didn’t hear him speak. But when you step back and consider what just happened, was this an ambush? It was absolutely an ambush, as evidenced by the video that you just made reference to being wheeled in. And then the president of the United States sitting there with printed out copies of alleged articles that lay out the crimes against Afrikaners in the country, a president who, by the way, has overturned the entire asylum system in the U.S. for every other nation, every other nationality, but is throwing open the doors to Afrikaners who are allegedly under assault. Elon Musk didn’t have to speak. He is the silent partner in the negotiations here. Elon Musk and StarLink have been trying to get into the South Africa space. They’re making all kinds of demands on the South African government. And I believe I truly believe that Donald Trump is carrying water for Elon Musk in these conversations. And they’re hoping that the South Africans will overturn a regulatory framework that has not made it possible for Musk to operate in South Africa in the way that he would like to. I hate to say I hate to say this about an American president, but too often we feel that there is some kind of a grift that’s involved with pronouncements around national security and foreign policy. It’s the case here, too, I believe. Well, there’s another foreign policy issue, though, that the U.S. seems to take particular exception with when it comes to South Africa, and that’s South Africa leading the charge in the International Court of Justice against Israel, claiming that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. That was among the reasons that the secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in testimony yesterday on Capitol Hill, suggested President Trump won’t be attending the G20 summit in November in South Africa, though he didn’t necessarily give us a firm answer on that in the Oval Office. Is that policy around Israel reconcilable between these two countries, Mr. Ambassador? I so appreciate that question from you, and I really wish that that dominated the dialogue today in the Oval Office that and trade instead of this ridiculous ruse around white genocide. But let’s be really clear. South Africa has had a longstanding relationship with elements of the Palestinian leadership, Palestinian civil society. No surprise to anyone that following October 7th, after South Africa appropriately denounced Hamas, appropriately talked about South Africa’s right to exist and to defend itself, that it then in turn took up a defense of Palestinians when they saw collective punishment being taken upon tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. So that should not have surprised anyone. If you know about South Africa’s history and record as it relates to Palestinians and global human rights. So now Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, two actors who have not spoken out about the collective punishment in Gaza, Donald Trump, a president of the United States, who said that we should clear all the Palestinians out of Gaza and turn it into some kind of like beachfront property. No concern for that. He’s now suddenly talking about genocide, but not in a context anywhere else in the world. He defends Putin’s incursion against innocent Ukrainians. He says nothing to speak up about what’s happening to Palestinians every single day where that now who is doubling down on his occupation and bombing in Gaza. And now he’s singling out white Afrikaners who have been who have been ginned up for him by fringe elements of his movement as victims of genocide. The hypocrisy is overwhelming here. So this is a president of the United States, in your view? Whose view has been corrupted by Elon Musk. I never thought I would live to see the day where a president of the United States would be fighting with Vladimir Putin against an innocent, sovereign nation that has been invaded and surfacing this myth about genocide in one country in order to help the business interests of one of his principal supporters who spent in excess of $250 million on his election. It’s an extraordinary thing. We have something in the United States called the For Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and I think that a responsible Congress would be looking thoroughly at these circumstances. Ambassador, we just have a minute left here, but given everything we’ve just discussed and the evident tension between the U.S. and South Africa, do you have hope a trade agreement between the two can be reached, knowing at the end of the 90 day period, a 30% reciprocal tariff could be put into place once again? I’m ever hopeful the U.S. and South Africa have had challenges in the relationship before. I remember being a young activist, you know, protesting against the resistance of the Reagan administration to lay sanctions against South Africa. We overcame. There is bipartisan support for the partnership between the U.S. and South Africa on trade and on health care relief as well. So I think that there are responsible Republicans in the Senate and the House who understand the importance of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, both for security and for economic growth. And they’ll increase the pressure to get to some resolution of these charges and of these challenges.