The Presidency of Ghana has called out the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, for his claims of white genocide happening in South Africa.

0

On May 21, President Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of having official policies of discrimination that are promoting white genocide in the African country.

1

President Ramaphosa refuted the claims by Trump, indicating that Black people are mostly the victims of crime happening in the country.

2

Reacting to the confrontation, Ghana's presidency noted that teh meeting at the White House was, at its heart, about the preservation of essential historical truths.

3

"The US president’s claims of white genocide conflict with the actual racial persecution and massacres that took place during the two centuries of colonisation and nearly 50 years of apartheid in South Africa," the presidency noted.

4

According to the presidency, the utterance by the US president is a clear example of how language can be leveraged to extend the effects of previous injustices.

5

"This mode of violence has long been used against Indigenous Africans. And it cannot simply be met with silence – not any more," it added.

6

The opinions of the presidency, believed to be those of President John Dramani Mahama recalled the  South African Soweto uprising and the racial persecution of Black South Africans which was rooted in a system that was enshrined in law.

7

The presidency stated: "It took worldwide participation through demonstrations, boycotts, divestments and sanctions to end apartheid so that all South Africans, regardless of skin colour, would be considered equal. Nevertheless, the effects of centuries-long oppression do not just disappear with the stroke of a pen, particularly when there has been no cogent plan of reparative justice.

8

Highlighting the discrimination against blacks in South Africa, the presidency stated that despite making up less than 10% of the population, white South Africans control more than 70% of the nation’s wealth.

9

"Even now, there are a few places in South Africa where only Afrikaners are permitted to own property, live, and work," the presidency remarked.

10

The Ghanaian presidency questioned the analogy of a white genocide in the current dispensation when such an action would have been best placed in the past when the wounds of injustice had not headled.

11

"Had the Black South Africans wanted to exact revenge on Afrikaners, surely, they would have done so decades ago when the pain of their previous circumstances was still fresh in their minds. What, at this point, is there to be gained by viciously killing and persecuting people you’d long ago forgiven?

12

According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, half of the population of South Africa is under 29, born after the apartheid era and, presumably, committed to building and uplifting the “rainbow nation”. For what reason would they suddenly begin a genocide against white people?" the presidency quizzed.

13

The presidency emphasised that President Ramaphosa was blindsided by Trump with those "unfounded accusations and the accompanying display of images that were misrepresented – in one image, pictures of burials were actually from Congo."

14

'Trump refused to listen as Ramaphosa insisted that his government did not have any official policies of discrimination," the presidency added.

15

The presidency concluding by stating that despite efforts to rewrite the narratives, the memory of Africans will carry the truth.

16

"The terror of what we have experienced is stored at a cellular level. As long as those stories are told, at home, in church, at the beauty and barber shop, in schools, in literature, music and on the screen, then we, the sons and daughters of Africa, will continue to know what we’ve survived and who we are."

17