S.African president to meet Trump on Wednesday over rising tensions

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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will meet with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, in Washington next week amid strained ties between the two countries, Pretoria said Thursday.

Tensions have been rising for months over a range of policy issues, culminating this week with the US resettling a first group of white Afrikaners that Trump claims are facing "persecution" in South Africa.

"On Wednesday, May 21, 2025, President Ramaphosa will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, DC, to discuss bilateral, regional and global issues of interest," the presidency said in a statement released late Wednesday.

The visit "provides a platform to reset the strategic relationship between the two countries", it said.

Trump has repeatedly shared unfounded claims that white Afrikaners are facing a "genocide", a conspiracy theory that has been widely dismissed.

White South Africans, who make up 7.3 per cent of the population, generally enjoy a higher standard of living than the black majority of the country.

Pretoria has said Trump's offer of refugee status to Afrikaners is "entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa's constitutional democracy".