'It's happening to me again!' South African president mocks Trump to laughing audience
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa reacts as he attends a press conference, after his White House meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently used a speech as an opportunity to make a dig at President Donald Trump, and got the audience to join in with him.
Politico reported Tuesday that during a speech to the 2025 Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium in Cape Town, South Africa, Ramaphosa recalled the viral moment from his Oval Office meeting with Trump earlier this month. During one moment at the event, the venue dimmed the house lights. This prompted Ramaphosa to openly wonder if he were about to watch a video purportedly showing crimes against South African farmers.
“When I came in, I saw the room going a bit dark,” Ramaphosa said as the crowd laughed. “They darkened the room. And for a moment I wondered, ‘what is this! It’s happening to me again!’”
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The South African leader told the assembled audience that while he was under the impression that he and Trump were having a productive conversation, he was caught off-guard when Trump asked a staffer to turn off the Oval Office lights and play a video he had cued up. The footage — which CBS said was recorded in 2020 — showed rows of white crosses in a field that Trump asserted were meant to represent white Afrikaner farmers who had been killed, though CBS said that the crosses actually were part of a demonstration for farmers of all races.
"Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers ...Those people are all killed," Trump told Ramaphosa as the video played.
Trump also showed news articles to Ramaphosa that he alleged were of reports on white South African farmers being murdered, though at least one of the article printouts he held up featured a screenshot of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ramaphosa said he was "bemused" by the encounter.
“I was beginning to get into a groove of, you know, interacting with this man,” Ramaphosa said. “And I suddenly hear him say, no, ‘dim the lights.’ And I must say, a number of people have said, ‘this was an ambush, this was an ambush.’ And I was bemused, I was like, ‘what’s happening!’”
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Click here to read Politico's report in full.
