Hard sell diplomacy? Ramaphosa-Trump sit-down turns testy
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It’s a White House visit preceded by some heavy-handed sales tactics. South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa in the lion’s den of the Oval Office after Donald Trump advisor Elon Musk accused Pretoria of discrimination over a stalled commercial deal to buy his Starlink low orbit satellite system.
Ramaphosa reportedly now offering a workaround of post-Apartheid local Black ownership laws, laws to address historical inequality in a nation where whites make up 7-percent of the population but still own 70 percent of the land.
Adding pressure on Donald Trump’s visitor, a lie that’s even appeared unsolicited on Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot. Grok talking up a supposed genocide against whites in South Africa – a country that’s got way too high a homicide rate for sure, but where in reality one percent of the victims are whites. Trump himself talking up the trope and offering refugee status to whites.
So how should the nation that currently hosts the rotating chair of the G20 handle its relations with the United States? How should it handle the South African-born Musk who enjoys outsized leverage it seems? And more broadly, what path for a South Africa that needs foreign investment to fulfil its potential?
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Jimena Morales-Velasco, Alessandro Xenos.
