Trump to Ramaphosa: 'White people in South Africa die a horrible death'

Donald Trump received South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in an atmosphere of high tension. Efforts to thaw soon gave way to a show that was anything but high diplomacy: accusations made by the US president to his host of genocide of the white population, despite being considered largely unfounded.

Trump, armed with controversial dossiers and over four minutes of political video he played in the Oval Office, claimed that white farmers are 'fleeing' the country, being killed and their land expropriated. "We have many people who believe they are being persecuted and they are coming to the United States. They're white farmers, they're fleeing South Africa and it's a very sad thing to see," the US President said.

The 'evidence' shown by Trump was quickly refuted by numerous experts. The projected video montage actually showed a politician not from the South African government but from the far-left opposition using violent slogans against white farmers, echoing songs from the days of the apartheid struggle. A segment of the video also showed a road dotted with crosses: Trump claimed that these were more than a thousand graves of murdered farmers, none of this, in truth they were signs of protest during a demonstration, the Washington Post pointed out. Flipping through the files he was holding that would document attacks on whites, Trump then commented: 'Death, death, horrible death'.

Ramaphosa, sitting next to Trump, denied any persecution of the white minority, reacting calmly to what the US media itself called an ambush comparable to that against Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. He clarified that in Trump's video there are rallies, 'not a government policy, in South Africa there is a democracy with many parties that allows them to express themselves'. Rather, he outlined the country's crime problems, pointing out that murders of black South Africans are more frequent than those of whites, and said he was open to discussing American concerns.

The most recent official statistics in South Africa reveal that of 19,696 murders between April and December 2024, only 36 were farm-related and of these 7 were farmers (not necessarily all white), the other 29 victims were employees, who tend to be black. Data from farmers' associations also show dozens of victims per year in agricultural areas.