Old Davos video falsely linked to South African president's 2025 state visit to US

“A summary of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with Donald Trump,” reads text superimposed on a TikTok video, published on May 19, 2025.

Image

Screenshot of the misleading TikTok post, taken May 20, 2025

Shared more than 1,300 times, the short clip shows Trump sitting at a table with officials while another man to his left addresses the room. The backdrop features the WEF logo and two US flags.

The TikTok account, called “newss40”, uses the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s logo as its profile picture.

In the video, Motsepe says to Trump: “And all we wanted to say is that Africa loves America, Africa loves you. We want America to do well, we want you to do well. The success of America is the success of the world.”

Some comments appeared to accept that the video depicted Ramaphosa’s visit to the US.

“In what capacity is Motsepe in this meeting?” asked one user.

“I was afraid this would happen. They were there to stroke his ego,” wrote another. 

A similar post also started circulating on X on the same day, with mixed reactions, but it still garnered more than a thousand likes. 

However, the video is old and unrelated to Ramaphosa’s state visit to the US in 2025. 

Davos in 2020 

A reverse image search of keyframes from the clip shows the video appeared on Facebook (here and here) in 2020 (archived here and here).

“Motsepe tells Donald Trump 'Africa loves you' at WEF 2020 in Davos,” reads the caption with one of the posts.

Search results also led to a picture of the moment Motsepe was lavishing praise on Trump, according to a caption on the stock photo site Alamy (archived here).

“On January 21, 2020, President Donald Trump attended a dinner at the Davos Congress Centre in Davos, Switzerland, where he listened to remarks from Dr. Patrice Motsepe, the Founder and Executive Chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, during the World Economic Forum,” reads the caption.

Image

Screenshot of a photo taken at the WEF dinner where Motsepe addressed Trump on January 21, 2020

Motsepe’s remarks about Africa loving Trump went viral on social media after backlash from critics who said he did not represent the continent (archived here).

The billionaire apologised on January 28, 2020, acknowledging “the views of Africans who disagreed” with him (archived here).

“I have a duty to listen to these differing views and would like to apologise,” he said. “I do not have the right to speak on behalf of anybody except myself.”

Motsepe is Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law and is listed by Forbes as the fourth richest person in South Africa. 

He was re-elected president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in March 2025 and is being touted (here and here) as a possible contender for the presidency after Ramaphosa (archived here, here and here).

As reported by AFP, Ramaphosa met Trump on May 21, 2025, in a bid to rescue deteriorating relations with the vital trade partner (archived here).

Notably, the posts circulated on the same day that the South African delegation arrived in Washington on May 19, 2025 (archived here).

During the visit, Trump surprised his South African counterpart Cyril by playing him a video designed to back baseless claims of a white "genocide."

Image

US President Donald Trump (right) and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa hold a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025 in Washington (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / CHIP SOMODEVILLA)

In the video, firebrand far-left opposition lawmaker Julius Malema was shown singing "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer" -- an infamous chant dating back to the apartheid-era fight against white-minority rule.

The chant is highly controversial in South Africa and was banned by a court in 2010. However a court in 2022 said that it did not constitute hate speech and should be considered in its historical context.

The video finished with images of a 2020 protest in South Africa where white crosses were placed along a rural roadside to honor a couple who were murdered on their farm in the east of the country.

Viral social media posts, some included in the video, have falsely claimed that dozens of white farmers are killed every day. But figures from groups representing farmers and Afrikaner interests show that around 50 people of all races are killed on farms every year.

Overall, about 75 people are murdered every single day in South Africa, most of whom are young black men in urban areas, according to police figures.