Ramaphosa stays cool during Trump’s choreographed attack

Three months after Donald Trump’s second term, foreign leaders must be aware that a coveted trip to the Oval Office will bring the risk of a very public dressing, often wandering in attempts to provocation and humiliation.

The episode of Wednesday with President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, was a classic of its kind, with the added turn of an ambush with Dimed Lights, a long video screening and piles of news story clippings.

While television cameras rolled, and after some well-helped discussion, Trump was asked by a journalist about what would be for him to be convinced that claims of “white genocide” in South Africa are not true.

Ramaphosa first responded by saying that the president “should listen to the voices of South Africans”. Trump then came in and asked an assistant to “put the light down” and set up the television so that he could show the South African leader “a few things”.

Elon Musk, his adviser and a billionaire born in South Africa, looked quietly from behind a bank.

What followed was an extraordinary and highly choreographed attack of accusations by the US President on the alleged persecution of white South Africans, who reflected the aggressive treatment of the leader of Ukraine Volodyymyr Zenskyy during his visit to the White House.

The images on the large screen showed South African political fire burners who sing “Shoot the Boer”, an anti-apartige song. And Trump, so often critically about the news media, seemed happy to parade photos of uncertain origin. Asked where alleged serious sites of white farmers were, he simply replied, “South Africa”.

The American leader also seemed to believe that the political leaders in the images – who are not part of the government – had the power to seize land of white farmers. They don’t do that.

While Ramaphosa has signed a controversial bill that allows ground promotions earlier this year, the law was not implemented. And the South African publicly distanced itself from the language in the political speeches shown.

But the highest ally of Nelson Mandela and negotiator in South Africa who helped to put an end to the apartheid regime of the white minority rule came up with this meeting.

Trump sometimes does not seem to be aware of transparent efforts of foreign leaders to flatter and that was clearly part of the South African strategy.

Admittedly, Donald Trump is a Golffanate, but Ramaphosa’s Gambit to take two top golfers – Ernie Els and Retief Goosen – to a meeting about diplomatic problems and trade policy did not get a textbook about international relationships I have ever read.

However, the pleasure of the American president to have the two white South African golfers was to be seen that everyone could be seen.

Their predictions about the fate of white farmers received almost as much screen time as the democratically elected President of South Africa, who largely limited to calm, short interventions.

But Ramaphosa will probably be happy with that. The golfers, together with his white Minister of Agriculture, himself from an opposition party that is part of the National Unity government, were, at least partly, as a shield – a kind of diplomatic golden dome if you want, and it worked.

Trump repeatedly returned to the matter of the plight of the farmers – of whom he welcomed dozens as refugees in the US. But President Ramaphosa was not bite and the provocations were largely left to blow in the wind.

At one point he referred to the golfers and an Afrikaner billionaire who had joined his delegation and told Trump: “If there was Afrikaner Farmer Genocide, I can bet you would not be here.”

But although President Trump was unable to increase the South African president, that does not mean that his efforts were in vain for more than an hour; They were certainly not that.

This performance style of diplomacy is just as focused on the domestic American public as on the latest visitor to the Oval Office.

Central to the Make America Great Again (Maga) project, the energy keeps observed grievances and resentment and President Trump knows what his supporters want.

If some foreign leaders learn to navigate these moments with skills, Donald Trump might have to change the playbook a bit to remain the impact he wants.