The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, was the target of a diplomatic ambush orchestrated by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, during an official visit to the White House.

Trump pressured Ramaphosa in front of cameras and aides with false or out-of-context videos. One of them pointed to alleged clandestine cemeteries in the country.

With firmness and serenity, Ramaphosa dismantled the staging. He questioned Trump about the origin of the videos, which the Republican admitted he did not know.

Then, with irony, the South African reacted to the provocation: "I'm sorry, I don't have a plane to give you," he said in a tone that many present understood as a veiled denunciation of the promiscuity between Trump and authoritarian regimes, like that of Qatar, from whom he received a luxurious Boeing worth 1 billion.

Completely out of diplomatic protocol, the childish attempt at humiliation was the same used against the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in February, successfully. But repeating it against Ramaphosa met with adequate resistance.

Unlike the Ukrainian, the South African president did not get upset, nor did he "argue back" or stand up. He remained in the same field of sarcasm as Trump, and his education dismantled the arrogance of the American who expected the conversation to devolve into insults and grandstanding, as it did with Zelensky.