The News
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will hold talks with his US counterpart Donald Trump during a trip to Washington next week which comes amid rising tensions between Pretoria and Washington.
Ramaphosa’s office said the pair will meet on May 21 “to reset the strategic relationship between the two countries.”
The White House this week banned all US government agencies from working on this year’s G20 summit, to be hosted by South Africa, The Washington Post reported, and the US has withdrawn aid from Africa’s biggest economy.
The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized what he says are policies it says discriminate against the country’s white minority, including a land expropriation law it has called racist.
The US also this week welcomed dozens of white South Africans it classed as refugees. Ramaphosa has said they “do not fit the definition” of refugees.
“Those people who fled are not being persecuted, they are not being hounded, they are not being treated badly,” he told delegates this week at the Africa CEO Forum in Abidjan.