By Nco Dube | 22 May 2025

The recent spectacle at the White House, where South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was joined by, amongst others,  golfing icons Ernie Els and Retief Goosen reportedly at the behest of US President Donald Trump, has left many South Africans and observers around the world both baffled and outraged. 

The optics of a white South African sportsman, standing in the most powerful office in the Western world, thanking the United States for its support during the Angolan war, a conflict in which the US backed the apartheid regime are not just tone-deaf. They are deeply insulting to the black majority of this country, who bore the brunt of apartheid’s brutality and continue to live with its legacy today.

The meeting was an attempt to address and, where possible, defuse tensions over false  race-related narratives, land reform, trade and aid policies, diplomatic disputes, and broader ideological differences. Both governments have signalled a desire to reset their strategic partnership, but the issues on the table are contentious and deeply rooted.

Trump’s portrayal of Afrikaners as victims has led to a diplomatic rift, threatened economic ties, distorted South Africa’s global image, and contributed to domestic and international polarisation. The narrative has been widely rejected by the South African government and many experts, but its amplification by a major world leader and the world’s wealthiest man (Elon Musk) has nonetheless had real and damaging consequences for South Africa’s international relations.

The White House Delegation: Golf, Billionaires, and the Politics of Nostalgia

The inclusion of Ernie Els and Retief Goosen in the South African delegation was a calculated move, orchestrated to appeal to Trump’s well-known passion for golf and to find common ground amid diplomatic tensions over the so-called “white genocide” narrative and land reform in South Africa. 

Billionaire Johann Rupert, who played a pivotal role in securing the meeting, was reportedly frustrated by Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric about Afrikaners and sought to inject some “truth” into the conversation. He was the only one of the three gentlemen who accompanied the South African government delegation to the meeting who directly countered Trump’s false narrative.

Yet, the “truth” presented in the Oval Office was a selective one. When Els thanked the US for its support during the Angolan war, he was, perhaps unwittingly, echoing a narrative that has long been used to whitewash the horrors of apartheid. 

The US, during the Cold War, supported the apartheid state as a bulwark against communism in southern Africa. This support was not for democracy, but for the maintenance of white minority rule—a regime that systematically oppressed, disenfranchised, and brutalised the black majority.

The Insult: Trivialising Apartheid’s Atrocities

Ernie Els has shown a noticeable shift towards more right-leaning views and public expressions even before the recent White House meeting. His close personal relationship with Donald Trump, built over years of golfing together, including at Trump’s Florida resorts and his public endorsements of Trump, such as congratulating him on his inauguration, have drawn criticism and highlighted Els’s increasingly conservative stance. 

While Els has generally avoided overt political statements, his alignment with Trump’s worldview and his failure to directly contradict Trump’s false narrative of a white genocide in South Africa when he had a chance to as part of the delegation aimed at reinforcing South Africa’s official narrative on land reform and alleged “white genocide” reflect a move towards embracing positions that resonate with right-wing perspectives in both South Africa and the US. This trajectory has made Els a controversial figure, as many South Africans see his views and actions as out of step with the broader national effort to address apartheid’s legacy and promote social cohesion.

To stand in the Oval Office and express gratitude for support that enabled the apartheid regime to survive longer is, at best, a profound misreading of history and, at worst, a tacit endorsement of the very system that denied the majority of South Africans their basic rights and dignity. It is an act that trivialises the suffering of millions and reinforces a dangerous nostalgia for a past that was only “better” for a privileged few.

Apartheid Was Not an Inconvenience—It Was a Crime Against Humanity

Apartheid, was not merely a policy of separation. It was a system of institutionalised racism designed to ensure white supremacy and black subjugation in every sphere of life—education, health, housing, employment, and political participation. Black South Africans, who made up more than 80% of the population, were relegated to impoverished townships and “homelands,” denied access to quality education, healthcare, and basic services. They were stripped of their citizenship, their land, and their dignity.

The infrastructure that some white South Africans nostalgically recall as “world-class” was built on the backs of black labour, and its benefits were reserved almost exclusively for the white minority. For the vast majority, apartheid meant poverty, violence, and exclusion from the very society they built with their sweat and blood.

The Persistence of Apartheid Apologism

What happened in Washington is not an isolated incident. It is symptomatic of a broader malaise in South Africa, a persistent refusal among many white South Africans to fully acknowledge the scale and impact of apartheid, and a tendency to use the failures of the post-apartheid state as a way to excuse or even romanticise our painful and brutal past.

Among the most damaging false narratives propagated by international and local right-wing commentators including South African-born billionaire Elon Musk and others, is the framing of South Africa’s reformist laws aimed at redressing apartheid-era injustices as a set of “100-plus racist laws” targeting the white minority. 

This narrative grossly misrepresents the intent and content of legislation such as the 2024 Expropriation Act and related land reform policies. These laws are designed to address the deeply skewed land ownership patterns left by apartheid, where the white minority still owns the vast majority of agricultural land, by enabling equitable redistribution and restitution in line with constitutional principles. 

The new Expropriation Act, for example, replaces an outdated apartheid-era law and introduces clear legal safeguards, including provisions for “just and equitable” compensation and strict conditions under which land can be expropriated without compensation such as abandoned land or land held speculatively. Far from arbitrary seizure, the laws require transparent processes and dispute resolution mechanisms.

Yet, this complex and constitutionally grounded reform effort is deliberately distorted by critics who label it as “racist” or “discriminatory” against whites, conflating legitimate land reform with persecution. This rhetoric fuels fear and division, undermines social cohesion, and provides cover for reactionary political agendas both inside South Africa and abroad. 

It also feeds into the broader “white genocide” myth that has been weaponised by figures like Trump and Musk to justify hostile policies against South Africa, such as the US refugee programme for white farmers and suspension of aid. The persistence of this false framing obstructs meaningful dialogue on addressing the enduring legacies of apartheid and achieving genuine equality and reconciliation.

Denial, Deflection, and the Myth of “Reverse Racism”

Surveys conducted in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that a significant proportion of white South Africans either denied their complicity in apartheid or believed it was a “good idea, badly executed”. Many reject the need for compensation or redress, and instead, frame any attempt at equity, such as affirmative action or land reform as “reverse racism”.

This denial is not just a personal failing; it is a political one. It undermines efforts at reconciliation and perpetuates the very inequalities that apartheid created. It is a refusal to accept that the privileges enjoyed by white South Africans today are the direct result of a system that dispossessed and dehumanised the black majority.

Apartheid Nostalgia: A Dangerous Fantasy

There is a growing trend, particularly among some whites but also among a small minority of black South Africans frustrated with the ANC’s failures, to look back on apartheid with a kind of perverse nostalgia. They point to the collapse of infrastructure, rising crime, and corruption as evidence that things were “better” under apartheid. But this is a fantasy, a wilful forgetting of the violence, the poverty, and the daily indignities inflicted on the majority.

As historian Jacob Dlamini and others have noted, even among black South Africans, nostalgia for the past is more a critique of the present than a genuine longing for apartheid. It is a symptom of disappointment with the post-apartheid state, not an endorsement of racial oppression. For whites, however, this nostalgia often serves as a shield against accountability, a way to avoid confronting the reality that their comfort was purchased at the expense of others’ suffering.

Thirty years after the end of apartheid, its legacy is still everywhere visible in the spatial geography of our cities, in the persistent economic divide, and in the continuing racial tensions that flare up in our politics and our daily lives. The failure of many white South Africans to acknowledge this legacy, and to support genuine efforts at redress, is not just a moral failing. It is a barrier to building the just and equal society that so many fought and died for.

For black South Africans, the trivialisation of apartheid is not just an intellectual insult. It is a daily wound. It is the erasure of lived experience, the denial of pain, the refusal to see the humanity of those who suffered. When prominent figures like Ernie Els stand in the Oval Office and thank the US for supporting apartheid’s war machine, they are not just misrepresenting history, they are perpetuating the very attitudes that made apartheid possible in the first place.

The Work of Reconciliation Is Not Done

True reconciliation requires more than symbolic gestures or diplomatic manoeuvres. It requires an honest reckoning with the past, a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths, to accept responsibility, and to support meaningful redress. It requires white South Africans, in particular, to move beyond denial and nostalgia, and to stand in solidarity with the black majority in the ongoing struggle for justice and equality.

The events in Washington are a stark reminder of how far we still have to go. Until we can tell the truth about our past without apology, without nostalgia, without denial, we will remain a nation divided, haunted by the ghosts of apartheid, and unable to build the future that all South Africans deserve.

“The damage caused by apartheid has not been overcome. Our failure to accept responsibility for apartheid has inhibited reconciliation and the creation of a just society.”— Home for All campaign declaration

Let us not allow the trivialisation of apartheid, whether right in the Oval Office or in our own homes, to stand unchallenged. The dignity of the majority and the soul of our nation demand nothing less.

(Dube is a Political Economist, Businessman, and Social Commentator on UkhoziFM and various newspapers. Read more of his articles here: www. ncodube.blog)