South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame during a panel discussion at the Africa CEO Forum in Abidjan on Monday. (African Business Forum)
White South Africans who have fled the country are a “fringe group” that have not been persecuted as claimed, but are opposed to the transformation process which is in line with the Constitution, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.
Ramaphosa was responding to a question at the Africa CEO forum in Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire about Afrikaners who have taken up United States President Donald Trump’s offer to accept them as refugees because of their alleged racial persecution in their home country.
“I had a conversation with President Trump on the phone and in passing I said, what is happening down there? What you are being told by those people who are opposed to transformation at home in South Africa is not true,” Ramaphosa said.
“And I added we were well taught by Nelson Mandela and other iconic leaders like Oliver Tambo on how to build a united nation. We are the only country in the continent where the colonisers came to stay and we have never driven them out of the country.
“We are making great progress. This is a fringe grouping and is anti-transformation. They would actually like to see South Africa going back to apartheid type of policies and I said I will never do this. I learned at the feet of Nelson Mandela and we intend to proceed with implementation in our institutions.”
Ramaphosa said Trump “understood that”, telling the forum: “I said I would like to come and meet him so I can discuss this matter further. Those people who fled are not being persecuted. They are not being hounded. They are not being treated badly. There is a sense that they do not want to embrace the changes taking place in our country in accordance with our Constitution and we think the American government has got the wrong end of the stick.”
Ramaphosa’s comments echoed those of South Africa’s international relations minister, Ronald Lamola, at a media briefing on Monday. It came as 49 Afrikaners were en route to the US to take up Trump’s offer of special refugee status.
Ramaphosa spoke during a presidential panel discussion at the Africa CEO forum, which also touched on Trump’s tariff war and his cutting of development aid to Africa and the rest of world.
Other panelists included Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Côte d’Ivoire leader Tiémoko Kone and Mauritanian President Mohamed El Ghazouani.
The African leaders were unanimous that the continent must become self-reliant and economically integrated through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to drive growth and find solutions to its own problems — including achieving peace and stability in conflict regions.
To do this Africa must take ownership and seek solutions to its problems, Ramaphosa said, concurring with Kagame, and joking that people may have expected friction between the two presidents who were seated together after their disagreements earlier this year on the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“On the peace process, particularly the conflict that’s been happening on our continent, and particularly the eastern DRC, I’d like to compliment rather than contradict what President Kagame is saying. People may think that President Kagame and I are in conflict, and some of you may have thought that there’s going to be fireworks as we’re sitting close to each other,” Ramaphosa said.
“The processes that have been happening on the continent, either the Nairobi process or the Rwanda process or the AU [African Union] process, have been very, very essential in building a foundation of peace making and also confidence, building up to and including agreements that have been reached for a cease fire between the belligerents, up to and including the withdrawal of the SADC [Southern African Development Community] forces, as they are withdrawing now.
“Our countries on the continent are not islands, we don’t live alone in this God given world. We have to interface and interact with others. So whatever contribution others can make who are extra African is important, but in the end, we must also remember the principle that we have adopted as Africa — African solutions for African problems.
“In the end any agreement has to be signed off, owned and appropriated by us as Africans, because this is our continent. We are in charge of the future of this continent, and we must build peace ourselves … We have the deep responsibility to ensure that peace does indeed prevail.”
Ramaphosa said he was concerned only 17% of business people surveyed at the Africa CEO Forum believed the continental free trade agreement was working.
“It’s quite concerning if that is the perception … Just as I entered this room, I could smell money, and I welcome this opportunity to sit here and look at people who have money or control money,” he said.
“These are people who control a lot of money on the continent … I want them to smell the coffee and go beyond their 17% scepticism, because the Africa Continental Free Trade Area is a fundamentally transformative mechanism.”
He said the AfCTA was a move towards “scaling the fortunes of Africa up” and moving “beyond just talking about politics and the unity of the continent” to install building blocks to support unity and progress.
“[It] is an engine of growth and we invite the private sector to embrace it, to participate in it because it gives the African continent an opportunity to integrate, and it gives business people the opportunity to see the 1.4 billion people market and GDP of the continent adding up to $3.4 trillion,” Ramaphosa said.
“With this agreement, we are able to get the private sector working with the public sector to embark on meaningful projects such as infrastructure, because for trade to happen infrastructure projects must be embarked upon. Roads must be built, our airlines must work properly, our ports must work properly, our rail network must work properly. And this is where the private sector can partner with the public sector,” Ramaphosa said.
He said investors’ money should be “put to good use … we should not just smell it, we must see it”.
Ramaphosa said the continent had integrated during the Covid-19 pandemic when it set up a personal protective equipment supply organisation to order supplies and worked on solutions to produce vaccines rather than relying solely on the West.
Kagame said the peace processes put in place on the continent had been essential to avoid being “fully dependent” on external countries, but added that he was “frustrated” with the mindset of some that Africa should be dependent on external sources for assistance.
“In terms of peace and security we find many troubles and there are all kinds of efforts going on back and forth, succeeding in some places, succeeding in others, and continued efforts going on,” he said.
“Even if we’re able to do things ourselves, we still have to bring in partners who have something to offer, but Africa must define which direction we want to take.”
He said Africa should not have allowed itself to be in the position where it would just “wake up one morning” to announcements such as Trump cutting aid and introducing tariffs.
“We should have been building up momentum in terms of what we need to do to make Africa self-dependent and resilient, and also in how Africa works with other continents and other countries … it is as well that President Trump decided to do what he did, if that was only to add to many other reminders that should wake us up [that], as Africa, we can do what we ought to do,” he said.
“And there are many opportunities. We always speak about the potential of our continent but when do we realise really what this potential is all about in reality? I think that has always been the question, and that comes back to us as a continent … to take the bull by its horns and deal with the problem.
“We can’t keep depending on what others are saying or doing about us. We need to be working with each other and other countries on the global stage that offer what we need, and we as well offer what they need.”
The two-day forum has drawn more than 900 chief executives, heads of state, investors, entrepreneurs, business leaders and government officials from around the world under the theme: “Can a New Deal Between State and Private Sector Deliver the Continent a Winning Hand?”
Its three areas of focus are strengthening economic governance, optimising public policy and accelerating the implementation of the AfCFTA.