Illegal Aliens: Elon, Trump, and Ramaphosa’s Betrayal of African Dignity

Kapya Kaoma

The May 21, 2025 Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is still making international headlines—and rightly so. But for me, it wasn’t just another diplomatic disaster in Washington, D.C. It was a shameful display of subservience. It was a moment where Ramaphosa, once a lion of the liberation movement, appeared more like a head-nodding subordinate than a sovereign leader.

Who doesn’t know Trump’s ignorance? That’s not news. But Ramaphosa’s posture—smiling, nodding, yielding—was shocking. It was less a meeting of equals and more a performance of colonial nostalgia. Watching him, I didn’t see diplomacy; I saw deference. It felt like he wasn’t just nodding along—he was kneeling before white political patrons at home and abroad.

Many have dismissed the event as just another Trumpian misstep, reminiscent of his infamous pressure tactics with Ukraine’s President Zelensky. But unlike Zelensky, who stood firm, Ramaphosa offered no such resistance. He wilted.

The low point? When Trump handed the mic to his white South African ally—a man who proceeded to channel Trump’s xenophobic playbook, blaming South Africa’s crime crisis on “illegal aliens.” Ramaphosa offered only the mildest objection, noting crime affects “both sides,” but stoodby as the speaker doubled down, invoking Elon Musk’s Starlink and surveillance drones as the solution to South Africa’s murdering of white farmers, I guess. That, apparently, was why they were in D.C–to beg Trump for help.

Mainstream media rightly condemned Trump for broadcasting grotesque footage of alleged “white farmer mass graves.” But far less attention was paid to the roots of South Africa’s violent crimes. Yes, some immigrants commit crimes—as is true in the US—but the overwhelming majority of violent crime is committed by South Africans themselves. At the center of the crime crisis isn’t immigration, but apartheid–a legacy many white South Africans still refuse to acknowledge.

Even Julius Malema’s fiery rhetoric—gleefully replayed by Trump during that meeting—cannot be divorced from that history. Black South Africans were promised that the end of apartheid would bring economic justice. It didn’t. So for a white South African to scapegoat immigrants—many of whom do menial labor for white families—is not just insulting, it’s cowardly. Many so-called “aliens” once sheltered South African exiles. Today, they’re used as political shields.

Ramaphosa knows this history. Yet he sat there, nodding, faintly smiling—as if hoping to win the favor of the very interests that once brutalized his people and stole their land. For what? A handshake with Trump? A wink from Musk?

This wasn’t diplomacy. It was a carefully staged moment in service of a broader anti-immigrant crusade, with Ramaphosa playing the willing understudy. The tired lie that “illegal aliens” are to blame for national decay has been disproven time and again. But now it’s being exported into South African politics—repackaged and redeployed for domestic gain.

Why didn’t Ramaphosa challenge his Afrikaner allies when they blamed immigrants for tensions around land reform—the real obsession behind Musk and Trump’s sudden interest in South Africa? Why didn’t he remind the world that in African culture, we don’t call people “aliens”? To do so is to deny our shared humanity.

Could it be that Ramaphosa is leaning into the “illegal alien” narrative to placate a public angry over unfulfilled promises? In South Africa, xenophobic attacks are not rare. Scapegoating immigrants is a way to deflect from state failure and to absorb Black rage—while also currying favor with those most threatened by land redistribution.

Instead of defending the truth, Ramaphosa embraced a dangerous fiction. He sacrificed ubuntu—the African ethic of shared humanity—for short-term political cover.

As for Starlink and the talk of border surveillance—was it part of a backroom deal? Did South African officials lure Musk with promises, or vice versa? Either way, the symbolism is damning. Musk has long trafficked in racial dog whistles, painting Afrikaners as refugees in need of asylum. Now he and Trump are repackaging that narrative as foreign policy.

Some still have sympathy for Ramaphosa. I do not. He undermined fellow Africans on the global stage. Trump lied. His white South African mouthpiece lied as Ramaphosa stood by.

Africa will not earn respect by bowing to white masters. It never has. Power, dignity, and justice are not found in proximity to whiteness—they’re claimed through courage and truth.

Yes, diplomacy is messy. But leadership demands more than polite smiles at powerful tables. It demands a backbone.

Ramaphosa had a choice. He chose favor over principle.

In the end, he lost both.