Fact check: Do Trump’s ‘white
genocide’ claims to Ramaphosa
hold up?
US president falsely claims white South African farmers face systematic killings in contentious meeting with South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa.
US President Donald Trump held a contentious meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday, when he repeated allegations that he and members of his administration have previously levelled, suggesting that white South African farmers are being systematically killed.
To prove his point, Trump showed the South African leader online videos, speeches and news articles.
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“Generally, they’re white farmers and they’re fleeing South Africa, and …. it’s a very sad thing to see. But I hope we can have an explanation of that because I know you don’t want that,” the US president said, as the visiting delegation looked on in disbelief.
Tensions have been escalating between the United States and South Africa since Trump took office this year, with Washington cutting off aid to Africa’s largest economy and sending back its ambassador last month.
But how true were Trump’s claims during the meeting in the Oval Office? Here is a fact check:
Trump repeated claims that there’s a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa: Is there?
No, there is not. Suggestions by Trump that a white genocide may be taking place have been repeatedly debunked by South African officials and independent analysts — and by data.
“So we take [refugees] from many locations if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on,” the US president said in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
“And we had a lot of people, I must tell you Mr. President [Ramaphosa], we have had a tremendous number of people, especially since they’ve seen this – generally they’re white farmers, and they’re fleeing South Africa.”
Earlier this month, 59 white South Africans arrived in the US as part of a refugee programme set up by Trump to offer sanctuary to them.
Trump’s claim echoes white nationalist beliefs that legislation in South Africa aimed at rectifying apartheid is now, in fact, discriminatory against the Afrikaner community.
Right-wing organisations, such as the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, have been championing a narrative that Afrikaners are under an existential threat.
The facts suggest otherwise.
“There is no credible evidence to support the claim that white farmers in South Africa are being systematically targeted as part of a campaign of genocide,” Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg, told Al Jazeera.
While South Africa does not break down crime statistics by race, according to the most recent data from April to December 2024 provided by the government, there were 19,696 murders during this period.
Only 36 of those murders were connected to farms, and only seven of the victims were farmers. The number of white victims is unclear. The remaining 29 victims were farm workers, who are predominantly Black in South Africa.
The scale of farm murders captured by the South African government’s data broadly matches the data of even AfriForum. The group says that 50 and 49 farm murders took place in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
“Genocide is a grave term, legally defined by the UN as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That threshold is not met in the case of South Africa’s farm attacks,” Kaziboni said.
White South Africans constitute 7 percent of the nation’s population but own more than 70 percent of its land. They also have about 20 times more wealth than Blacks on average. In corporate South Africa, white individuals occupy 62 percent of top management positions, while 17 percent of leadership roles are held by Black managers.
Are there white ‘burial sites’ on the side of a
South African highway?
The White House staff played a video clip at the Oval Office that Trump insisted showed “burial sites of thousands of white farmers” with white crucifixes lined up along a local highway.
When Ramaphosa asked him where the footage was from, saying, “This, I’ve never seen”, Trump claimed it was in South Africa.
Trump was right — the visuals were from South Africa. But he was also wrong — they weren’t images of burial sites.
The images had been shared by Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier this year, too, as evidence that a white genocide was taking place.
However, local records and a report at the time from the South African Institute of Race Relations confirmed that crosses were symbolically planted on the side of the road during a 2020 protest related to the killings of white South African couple Glenn and Vida Rafferty on a farm.
They were not gravestones, as Trump falsely asserted.
According to South Africa’s Transvaal Agricultural Union — a group sympathetic to Afrikaner farmers — the total number of farm murders in South Africa between 1990 and 2024 stood at 2,229, which included 1,363 white farmers, 529 relatives of white farmers, 38 white workers, 30 white visitors, 88 Black farmers, 61 relatives of Black farmers, 188 Black workers, and seven Black visitors.
On average, 56 white South Africans were killed on farms per year during the 35-year period, according to this data.
“These crimes are brutal and concerning, but they stem from high levels of violent crime and poor rural policing, not from a state-sponsored or group-led intent to annihilate a racial group,” Kaziboni said.
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