South African Politician Claps Back After Trump Showed Video of Him to Support Claims of White 'Genocide'

South African politician Julius Malema has responded to his unexpected appearance in the Oval Office on Thursday — after President Donald Trump played video footage of Malema in an effort to convince South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that "white genocide" is occurring in his country.

"A group of older men gather in Washington to gossip about me," Malema wrote on X with characteristic defiance.

Video segments of Malema's activism were played at the request of Trump following a back and forth with Ramaphosa, who insists there is no white genocide in South Africa.

"We have thousands of stories talking about it. And we have documentaries, we have news stories," Trump insisted before asking a staffer to turn down the lights and play the tape.

What followed was a compilation of footage showing Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), singing "Kill the Boer, the farmer" — a controversial chant with historical ties to South African resistance to apartheid, and on the parliament floor calling for expropriation of white-owned farm land.

Malema leads the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party in South Africa, which describes itself as a "radical, leftist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement." He has been heavily criticized for using the Kill the Boer chant, and was sued under a law prohibiting hate speech. However, South Africa's Supreme Court ruled in Malema's favor.

"Reasonably well-informed persons would appreciate that Mr. Malema was not actually calling for farmers, or white South Africans of Afrikaans descent, to be shot – They would understand that he was using an historic struggle song as provocative means of advancing his party's political agenda," the 2024 decision read.

Ramaphosa reiterated in the meeting that while South Africa has a crime problem that includes attacks on farmers, the issue is widespread and not racially targeted.

Billionaire white South African Johann Rupert, who accompanied Ramaphosa to the meeting, echoed the sentiment, dismissing the "genocide" framing as misleading while acknowledging Malema's anti-capitalist politics. "I have been a target of this man for ten years," Rupert said.