Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa was the latest to get the White House treatment

It is embarrassing to watch the ritual humiliation of world leaders as they run the gauntlet of a visit to US President Donald Trump at the White House.

There have been a number of visiting leaders since the beginning of his second term in January 2025, the first being Benjamin Netanyahu who was the exception that proves the rule that Trump is not a good host.

Netanyahu was surprised and delighted to hear from Trump of his crazy plan for the US to take over Gaza, remove all its Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan and turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East. It was a callous remark, but it went down very well amongst the extremists in Israel. It brought the ceasefire Trump himself helped bring about to an abrupt end at a terrible cost to the poor Palestinians in Gaza and the long suffering Israeli hostages.

Next came King Abdullah II of Jordan who politely refused to go down the Middle East Riviera madness. Although diminutive, Abdullah knows how to carry himself with dignity and keep Trump at bay. He handled the situation with great diplomatic skill saying that the Arab states would come up with their own plan for Gaza and offered to take a few hundred injured and sick children to hospitals in Jordan.

He was followed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer who was sycophantic compared to French President Emmanuel Macron who preceded him and adopted a more tactile approach. Many Britons cringed as Starmer shamelessly ingratiated himself by producing an invitation from King Charles III for an unprecedented second state visit for Trump.

There was a campaign to disinvite him after he was nasty to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shortly afterwards, but the king does not disinvite – his mother Queen Elizabeth II had to endure a state visit by communist Romania’s president Ceausescu in 1978.

President Zelenskiy of Ukraine had come cap in hand and was scolded like a schoolboy for being disrespectful and shown the door after being shouted down.

Trump and his vice president were incredibly loud and rude to Zelenskiy who was caught completely by surprise. He made the cardinal mistake of arguing with them in public in English which he does not speak very well. Since then, he took part in a great photo opportunity with Trump at the Vatican at Pope Francis’ funeral that restored his standing. 

Mark Carney, the newly elected prime minister of Canada, was next to brave the White House fire-side trap. Trump had been making covetous claims against Canada calling it the fifty first state and its previous prime minister governor Justin Trudeau. But Carney who got elected on the back of Trump’s trade war and absurd territorial claims is both smooth and smart. He made nice with Trump by accepting that he might wish Canada was a US state but stated that was never going to happen.

In the old days demanding another state’s territory was casus belli – cause of war. When Ottoman Sultan Selim II sent his ambassador to Venice in 1570 to demand they hand over Cyprus, the Venetians declared war on the Ottomans for their impertinence.

Next Trump did some visiting himself. He went to Saudi Arabia and Qatar where at times he cut a hunched much reduced figure. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the Emir of Qatar are both very tall imposing figures with much gravitas in their regal robes that made Trump not the big man he normally looks when he holds court at the White House.

Last week it was the turn of poor old Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa who came to the White House knowing he was likely to ambushed. Not only had Trump cut all aid to South Africa, but a week ago he authorised the grant of asylum to 50 white Afrikaners even though the US stopped admitting refugees from all other countries.

Ramaphosa was shown a video and pictures that Trump claimed was proof of white genocide in South Africa. There was no indication that the US intends to file a claim of genocide of white Afrikaners against South Africa. It was completely out of order to browbeat a visiting head of state with allegations of genocide; the proper civilised course is to bring a genocide case against South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

South Africa has a very high murder rate but the victims are mostly blacks and while there is bad blood between blacks and the Afrikaner farming community there is no convincing evidence of genocide. 

Alas Ramaphosa does not have the personality and strength of character of Nelson Mandela to walk out on Trump for disrespecting him. He denied that the whites in South Africa are being persecuted, although he did not deny that the murder rate in South Africa is such that the security services are not always able to protect the population white or black.

He then switched the subject to golf and joked about not being in a position to give Trump a gift of a Jumbo jet and departed relatively unscathed.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have been against South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in Gaza. Trump thinks nothing will come of it, but he must know that it is no defence against South Africa’s case to allege she is committing genocide against its white population.

What is difficult to comprehend about Trump is that he laments the bloodbath in Ukraine, but not a single tear for the much worse bloodbath in Gaza.