Seated just a few feet from President Trump in the Oval Office, South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa watched the lights dim and White House staff play a video from his country of black political activists and their “Kill the farmer!” chants.
When the lights came back on, Trump picked up a stack of news articles and thumbed through them to show the photos of murdered whites. “Death. Death. Death,” Trump bluntly said of the murdered victims.
Even though Ramaphosa pushed back against Trump's accusations, such as disputing Trump's claim of a mass burial site of white farmers, post-Apartheid South Africa has a documented history of blacks seeking vengeance against whites. Whites currently make up a single-digit minority in a population of 63 million.
The country moved away from its racial segregation in the 1990s and make history when Nelson Mandela, a former political prisoner, was elected president in 1994.
To fact-check Trump about his claim of mass burial sites, a BBC story quotes a white farmer who also praised the U.S. president for raising the issue of anti-white vengeance. Rob Hoatson told the BBC the video cited by Trump was a temporary memorial to a murdered white couple, not a burial site for 1,000 murdered farmers, which President Trump claimed.
"But the big issue here is not really whether it's a burial site or whether it's a memorial," Hoatson, who praised Trump for confronting President Ramaphosa, told the BBC.
"I think Trump placed the facts at the foot of Ramaphosa and asked him to respond to them," the white South African told the BBC.
Political consultant Richard Holt, a Project 21 ambassador, tells AFN he has a friend who is a white farmer and land owner in South Africa. Even though the White House focus on South Africa is appreciated, Holt says, his friend says the problem is even worse than described by Trump and others.
“The problem isn't that it's just random crime. It's a systemic racialized collapse,” Holt warns. “The white farmers are being attacked. They're being tortured and killed, and then the police don't respond.”
Church pastor Vincent Matthews, another Project 21 member, told AFN in a previous story he observed South Africa’s vengeful stance against whites while serving as a church missionary there.
"There is a challenge and discrimination that many, especially in rural areas, are feeling," Mathews previously told AFN. "Many have been afraid, and they've had family members who have been killed."
For that previous story, about white farmers granted refugee status in the U.S., AFN reviewed news articles for accurate and reliable statistics about the number of murdered white farmers. A fact-checking article by AFP said the country averaged an average of 50 murders of white farmers and their families in 2022 and 2023.
AFN cited that article because its source was two groups, a union of white farmers and a minority rights organization.
Holt says what is happening in South Africa is a warning when racial grievance becomes a national policy. So he believes President Trump is "doing the right thing” by holding President Ramaphosa accountable and for granting asylum to white farmers who are being targeted.
“We shouldn’t be giving foreign aid to foreign countries like this anyway,” Holt argues. “There shouldn't be foreign aid going to the country at all.”
