CAPE TOWN, South Africa — President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa are scheduled to meet at the White House next week following allegations by Trump — and denied by South Africa — that ''genocide'' is being committed against white farmers in the majority Black country.
The meeting, announced Wednesday by the South African government and set for May 21, also comes after the U.S. 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.
Ramaphosa's office said he will be in the U.S. from Monday to Thursday of next week, and will meet with Trump on Wednesday at the White House. Ramaphosa's trip would aim to ''reset the strategic relationship between the two countries,'' his office said.
The White House had no immediate comment on the meeting, which would be Trump's first with the leader of a nation in Africa since he returned to office in January.
Trump has criticized South Africa's Black-led government on multiple fronts and issued an executive order Feb. 7 cutting all U.S. funding to the country as punishment for what he said were its anti-white policies at home and anti-American foreign policy.
The Republican president has singled out South Africa over what the U.S. 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 — the same day that the first batch of Afrikaner refugees arrived at Dulles International Airport in Virginia — that there was ''a genocide taking place'' against white farmers that was being ignored by international media.
The U.S. 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.
