US President Donald Trump held a controversial meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House on Wednesday, repeating allegations that he and his administration’s members had levelled earlier, suggesting that white South African farmers have been systematically killed.
To prove his point, Trump showed online videos, speeches and news stories from South African leaders.
“In general, they’re white farmers, they’re fleeing South Africa, and… That’s very sad. But I know you don’t want it, so I hope we can explain it.”
Tensions have escalated between the US and South Africa since Trump took office this year, with Washington cutting back on aid to Africa’s biggest economy and sending back the ambassador last month.
But how true was Trump’s claim during a meeting in the oval office? This is the fact check:
Trump has repeated his claim that South Africa has “white genocide.”
No, it’s not. Trump’s proposal that white genocide could be happening has been repeatedly exposed by South African officials, independent analysts and data.
“So we take [refugees] The US president said Wednesday in his oval office.
“And we had a lot of people, I have to tell you the President. [Ramaphosa]we had a huge number of people, especially since they saw this. They are generally white farmers and flee South Africa. ”
Earlier this month, 59 white South Africans arrived in the United States.
Trump’s claims reflect the beliefs of white nationalists that South African law aimed at revising apartheid now discriminating against African communities.
Right-wing organizations such as the Afrikaner Lobby Group Afriforum have defended narratives of existential threats for Africans.
The facts suggest that is not the case.
“There is no credible evidence to support the allegations that white South African farmers are systematically targeted as part of a genocide campaign,” Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg, told Al Jazeera.
According to the latest April-December 2024 data provided by the government, South Africa does not break down crime statistics by race, but there were 19,696 murders during this period.
Only 36 of these murders were connected to the farm, with only seven farmers. The number of white victims is unknown. The remaining 29 victims were farm workers, primarily black in South Africa.
The scale of the farm murders captured by South African government data is roughly in line with afriforum data. The group says 50 and 49 farm murders occurred in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
“Genocide is a critical term, legally defined by the United Nations and is carried out with the intention of destroying national, ethnic, racial or religious groups.
South Africans make up 7% of the country’s population, but own more than 70% of the land. They also have about 20 times the wealth on average as black people. In South African companies, white people make up 62% of the top executives, and 17% of leadership roles are held by black managers.
Are there white “burial sites” on the sides of South Africa’s highways?
White House staff performed the video clip in an oval office that Trump claimed to have shown “the burial site of thousands of white farmers” lined with white crosses lined up along the local highway.
When Ramaphosa asked him where the footage came from, he said, “This, I’ve never seen it,” Trump claimed it was in South Africa.
Trump was right – the visuals were from South Africa. But he was wrong too – they were not images of the burial site.
The image was shared earlier this year by Tesla CEO Elon Musk as evidence that white genocide was taking place.
However, local records and reports from the South African Institute for Racial Relations confirmed that the intersection was symbolically planted on the side of the road during the 2020 protests related to the murder of white couple Glenn and Vida Rafferty on the farm.
They were not gravestones, as Trump falsely argued.
According to the South African Transvaal Agricultural Union (a group that sympathizes with African farmers), the total number of farm murders in South Africa between 1990 and 2024 was 2,229.
The data show that, on average, 56 South Africans were killed on farms a year in 35 years.
“These crimes are cruel and concerning, but they come from high levels of violent crime and poor rural police, rather than state-led or group-led intent to annihilate racial groups,” Kaziboni said.
Trump claims there is no justice for the killers of white farmers.
“You allow them to take the land, and when they take the land, they kill the white farmers. And when they kill the white farmers, nothing happens to them,” Trump complained to Ramaphosa.
The main topic of competition between the two countries was the recent passing of the Land Expropriation Act by South Africa, which Trump has denounced as “persecution” of the country’s rich white minority.
The law allows the government to seize land from white people or other people for public purposes or for public interest. The law spells fair compensation, but in certain cases it also allows for seizures without compensation.
However, unlike what Trump argued, the law makes it clear that only the government, not vigilantes, can take land from farmers.
And Trump is inaccurate with his claim that “nothing happens” to those committing farm murders. In November 2022, two men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Glenn and Vida Rafferty.
What about South African politicians who chant “kill Bohr”?
Trump’s team also showed a video of Julius Malema, an opposition figure and leader of the Left Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF) party, and sang the anti-apartheid song Dubul ‘Ibhunu (“Kill the Boer”).
“Boer” is the Afrikaans word for peasants, and on one level it simply means farmer, all races.
However, the title often means actually “killing Africans.” The song appeared in opposition to more than 30 years of apartheid rules that leaked onto the streets of South African towns in the 1980s. The song’s title is often translated as “Kill the White Farmer.”
Ramaphosa told Trump that he repeatedly denounced Malema and his statements, but that doesn’t reflect the official government position.
Meanwhile, Malema has repeatedly stated in both court and interviews that he “is not seeking a white massacre, at least for now.”
Anti-apartheid veterans argue that the lyrics are not incitement to violence against white people, explaining that Bohr symbolizes the broader concept of oppressors.
A South African court also ruled that the song does not constitute hate speech.
Kaziboni said these rulings were “controversial.”
“When threatened, some people fear that they may not be relied upon enough to leave the vulnerable group,” he said.
However, researchers at the University of Johannesburg said the court and the South African government seem to be trying to find a balance between “freedom of expression, historical relief and social cohesion.”
“court [have] It emphasized the need to understand songs within historical and political contexts. Not as a literal instigation against violence, but as a symbolic act of resistance embedded in the country’s liberation struggle,” Kaziboni said.
“Death, Death, Fearful Death”: Trump presents bundles of articles
Sitting next to Ramaphosa, Trump lived a series of articles showing that he had shown further evidence of the persecution of white farmers.
“People’s death, death, death, horrifying death, death,” Trump wrote in front of a reporter.
However, in the stack of papers there was a blog post with the image of Goma City, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kaziboni said in an era of “a rising global misinformation,” Trump’s South African framing “misreports both facts and deeper history.”
“The evidence he presents is unknown and is not even known to Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa,” the researchers said. “It’s important not to reduce complex issues to simple narratives driven by ideological agendas.”
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