Ramaphosa, Trump Bilateral: Humiliation in the Shadow of White Capital

Sipho Singiswa

President Cyril Ramaphosa's meeting with Donald Trump last week, on the surface, may have appeared to be a standard diplomatic encounter. But for those observing from a Black revolutionary perspective, the moment carried the unmistakable weight of humiliation. It echoed the treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, another leader caught performing for Western approval rather than asserting the sovereignty of his people.

The meeting was framed around the latest fabricated crisis: the so-called genocide and land persecution of the Afrikaner minority in South Africa. This narrative, pushed by AfriForum and echoed by right-wing media and political networks in the United States, is not only baseless it is a calculated tactic to derail the project of land reform and restorative justice in South Africa. Ramaphosa, rather than challenging this fiction, found himself clarifying, appeasing, and ultimately exposing his begging bowl approach to the US.

The optics were painful. Ramaphosa did not stand as a servant of the landless majority, but as a custodian of the privileges bestowed upon him by white monopoly capital. His tone, his posture, his rhetoric all suggested a man more concerned with protecting foreign investments and elite economic interests than with pushing forward the Expropriation Act that he himself signed.

Trump’s role in this spectacle was clear: to intimidate, to lecture, and to remind Ramaphosa who really holds power. It was easy to imagine Trump leaning over the desk, finger pointed, declaring: “You cannot pursue genocide charges against Israel while you are accused of genocide against White South Africans. Remember we made you.”

The farcical nature of the AfriForum claims cannot be overstated. Afrikaners remain the dominant landowners in South Africa, controlling over 70% of mineral-rich land and vast sectors of the economy. They are overrepresented in the judiciary and other key institutions. And yet, it is this community that is being painted as persecuted, while the majority Black population continues to live under the economic consequences of historical dispossession.

This propaganda campaign is not isolated. It fits into a larger strategy reminiscent of CIA-backed efforts like the Orange Revolutions, aiming to destabilise countries in the Global South that challenge Western hegemony. The AfriForum narrative, like the denial of Israeli war crimes, serves to delegitimise real struggles for justice and redirect global attention toward manufactured grievances.

What is more, this campaign is being actively supported by a powerful media apparatus dominated by white interests, both locally and abroad. The timing of these accusations is no coincidence. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel to the International Criminal Court, and the backlash is coordinated. The intent is clear: discredit South Africa’s moral standing by painting it as hypocritical, thereby neutralising its global advocacy for Palestine.

Meanwhile, US-based Zionist organisations and South African Jewish organisations have played an instrumental role in coordinating visits to Israel by leaders of South Africa’s so-called Government of National Unity. These visits, supported by US funding and framed as educational or diplomatic, are part of a broader media and public relations war designed to shore up support for Israel and silence criticism.

These visits continue even as Palestinian children are buried under rubble and Israeli war crimes mount. They continue despite the South African government’s official position. And yet, Ramaphosa says nothing.

Why?

Because the man who claims to lead a liberation party serves the empire that his forebears fought against. Ramaphosa was not made president to dismantle white capital. He was elevated to manage it, protect it, and lend it a black face. His paper billionaire status, built on deals brokered by the very same monopoly capital he now shields, makes him both a product and a prisoner of this system.

The hard irony is that the same forces that falsely claim genocide against Afrikaners are actively involved in genocide against Palestinians. The comparison is not just symbolic it is strategic. As Afrikaner nationalists have historically aligned themselves with Zionist ideology, both claiming divine rights to land taken by force, they now rely on the same international structures to preserve their grip on power.

In both cases, settler colonial regimes used religion, propaganda, and white supremacy to justify their theft. In both cases, the truth is inverted: the oppressors are recast as victims, while the dispossessed are branded as threats.

This is not just about Ramaphosa’s failure to act. It is about the broader betrayal of a liberation vision. It is about a captured state, a neutralised ANC, and a political elite more loyal to Tel Aviv, London, and Washington than to Khayelitsha, Soweto, or Alex.

At this moment, the question is no longer whether Ramaphosa is doing enough to resist white capital. It is whether he was ever meant to. His meeting with Trump was a glimpse into the true nature of post-apartheid power: gutted, compromised, and loyal to everything the liberation struggle fought to overturn.

* Sipho Singiswa is a political commentator, writer and filmmaker. A 1976 student leader he spent much of his youth in apartheid prisons and Robben Island.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.