'Genocide' claim casts shadow on US meeting

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was set to meet Donald Trump yesterday amid tensions over Washington's resettlement of white Afrikaners that the US president claims are the victims of “genocide.”

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The Trump administration’s admission of around 50 white South Africans last week — even as it halts refugee arrivals from most of the rest of the world — was set to dominate the meeting at the White House.

Mr Ramaphosa said he hoped to reset historically low relations with a crucial trading partner and at the same time confront Mr Trump over what Pretoria says are false claims of persecution.

The South African president will stress to Trump that conspiracies of a “white genocide” in South Africa are “patently false,” his spokesman Vincent Magwenya said ahead of his departure for the US.