Mahama Pens Opinion Article Critical of Trump After Treatment of South Africa's President Ramaphosa
- President John Mahama has criticised US President Donald Trump after his recent meeting with South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa
- The Ghanaian President took issue with Trump's attempts to insist that there was ongoing persecution of white residents of South Africa
- Trump ambushed Ramaphosa on May 21 by playing him a video that he claimed proved racial persecution was happening in RSA
President John Mahama has written an article critical of US President Donald Trump following his recent meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Mahama called Trump’s ambushing of Ramaphosa over claims of racial persecution unfounded and an insult to all Africans.
Source: Getty Images
Trump ambushed the South African President on May 21 by playing him a video that he falsely claimed proved genocide was being committed against white people in South Africa.
In Mahama's piece, published by The Guardian, he stressed the importance of upholding the truth.
"The US president’s claims of white genocide conflict with the actual racial persecution and massacres that took place during the two centuries of colonisation and nearly 50 years of apartheid in South Africa."
Mahama recalled the solidarity Ghanaianas showed in support of black South Africans during Apartheid and associated atrocities.
He noted the Sharpeville massacre and the Soweto uprising as examples.
Mahama further rubbished the suggestions that white South Africans were being persecuted by the black majority.
"Ramaphosa was blindsided by Trump with those unfounded accusations and the accompanying display of images that were misrepresented - in one image, pictures of burials were actually from Congo. Trump refused to listen as Ramaphosa insisted that his government did not have any official policies of discrimination."
Mahama ended the piece by noting that there were actual humanitarian crises that required the world's attention. His full opinion article can be read here.
Excerpt of Mahama's piece
African nations learned long ago that their fates are inextricably linked. When it comes to interactions with the world beyond our continent, we are each other’s bellwether. In 1957, the year before my birth, Ghana became the first Black African country to free itself from colonialism. After the union jack had been lowered, our first prime minister, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, gave a speech in which he emphasised that, “our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa”.
Shortly after, in 1960, was the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, which resulted in 69 deaths and more than 100 wounded. In Ghana, thousands of miles away, we marched, we protested, we gave cover and shelter. A similar solidarity existed in sovereign nations across the continent. Why? Because people who looked like us were being subjugated, treated as second-class citizens, on their own ancestral land. We had fought our own versions of that same battle.
I was 17 in June 1976, when the South African Soweto uprising took place. The now-iconic photo of a young man, Mbuyisa Makhubo, carrying the limp, 12-year-old body of Hector Pieterson, who had just been shot by the police, haunted me for years. It so deeply hurt me to think that I was free to dream of a future as this child was making the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and future of his people. Hundreds of children were killed in that protest alone. It is their blood, and the blood of their forebears that nourishes the soil of South Africa.
What happened when Trump met Ramaphosa?
Trump's meeting with Ramaphosa evoked the controversial bullying of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February.
The US leader has long maintained that Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists who ruled South Africa during its decades of racial apartheid, are being persecuted, though this allegation has been rejected.
The video shown included footage of former South African president Jacob Zuma and firebrand opposition politician Julius Malema singing an apartheid-era struggle song called Kill the Boer.
Ramaphosa, who was hoping to have trade talks, pushed back, saying that the controversial politician did not speak for the government.
There was also footage that Trump claimed showed the graves of more than a thousand white farmers, marked by white crosses and also produced a batch of newspaper articles that he said were reporting on killings in South Africa.
The meeting came days after about 50 Afrikaners arrived in the US to take up Trump’s offer of refuge. He made the offer despite the US halting arrivals of asylum seekers from most of the rest of the world as he cracks down on immigration.
US halts student visa appointments
YEN.com.gh also previously reported that the US ordered embassies to temporarily stop scheduling new student visa appointments.
In a copy of a memo to diplomatic posts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said vetting would increase for student and foreign exchange visas.
In 2024, the number of Ghanaian students studying in the US increased to 9,394 from 2023, with the country likely to be among the most affected.
Proofreading by Bruce Douglas, copy editor at YEN.com.gh.
Source: YEN.com.gh
