President Trump Meets With South African President Cyril Ramaphosa At The White House ©(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Afrikaner community has slammed South Africa’s new ambassador to the U.S., an apartheid-era negotiator, as a “turncoat” while the country’s left-wing accuses him of being too accommodating to entrenched “white power structures.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Roelf Meyer as ambassador Tuesday, saying that he is “more than qualified” to work with stakeholders in the U.S. and “recalibrate” the relationship between Pretoria and Washington.
Tensions between the two countries began to wear thin after a May meeting between President Donald Trump and Ramaphosa escalated, with Trump accusing the South African president of being complicit in a genocide while showing photos of white crosses representing murdered Afrikaner farmers. (RELATED: Remains Of Teen US Soldier Who Went Missing During Korean War Identified)
Meyer served as the country’s minister of defense from 1991 to 1992 under the white minority government and served as a chief negotiator in the talks that ended apartheid and resulted in the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, according to the Associated Press (AP).
It is this portion of Meyer’s public service that has invited the intense scrutiny he faces from both sides of South Africa’s political divide.
Dr. Ernst Roets, an Afrikaner activist and executive of Lex Libertas, referred to Meyer as “the single biggest turncoat in Afrikaner history,” leaving only an exception for Piet de Wet — a Boer commander who eventually sided with the British during the Second Boer War.
Roets argued that although the apartheid system should have ended, Meyer’s negotiations ultimately resulted in a centralized government dishing out “destructive policies.”
South Africa has since spent years constructing racially-based laws targeting white farmers and businesses, and the government has overseen systemic crime, corruption and murders of its citizens — with a disproportionate number of those attacks allegedly targeting the Afrikaner community that Meyer represented.
Theo De Jager, executive director of the Southern African Agri Initiative, previously told the Daily Caller during an on-the-ground investigation that South Africa has 132 acts discriminating based on race.
This has led to Trump’s efforts to streamline a path for the country’s white minority to come to the U.S. as refugees.
Afrikaner podcaster Nicole Barlow described Meyer as a “man loathed as a traitor by his own people, dispatched to whisper there’s no genocide, the farms are safe, and the rainbow nation is thriving.”
Ernst van Zyl, head of public relations at AfriForum — an Afrikaner civil rights organization — shared a video of a much younger Ramaphosa claiming that Meyer was dancing following the apartheid negotiations.
“I kept wondering whether I would have been as happy as he was, if I was in his position, having finally given in in the way that they had,” Ramaphosa said.
Meyer joined Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), in 2006.
The Economic Freedom Fighters, a political party led by Julius Malema, rejected Meyer’s appointment for his role in the apartheid government, according to a press release.
Malema has previously come under fire for his use of the “kill the Boer, kill the farmer” chant.
The EFF said the ANC government “has abandoned the revolutionary nature of our struggle and is now willing to rehabilitate those who once upheld oppression, in order to appease global powers.”
The press release further claimed that the U.S. is “grappling with entrenched racism and the resurgence of right-wing, white supremacist politics.” (RELATED: Investigating Farm Killings In South Africa — What We Saw)
The statement continues by rejecting Ramaphosa’s claims that Meyer’s appointment signals “experience.”
“[I]t reflects a dangerous willingness by the current administration to appease Trump’s white supremacist whims by presenting a figure who is palatable to white power structures,” the press release continued.
While both Afrikaners and the EFF represent minorities in South Africa, it remains unclear what Meyer is expected to do to amend his nation’s relationship with the U.S. — and it is yet to be seen how effective he will be in that pursuit.
The Daily Caller reached out to the South African Embassy to the U.S. but has not heard back as of publication.
