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India
South Africa’s Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has accused U.S. President Donald Trump of distorting facts to promote a false narrative that white farmers are being systematically targetted and killed in South Africa, The Associated Press reported on Saturday.
The accusation follows a meeting at the White House on Wednesday between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, during which a video was shown depicting rows of white crosses along a rural road. Trump described the scene as “burial sites, over a thousand, of white farmers,” claiming the cars nearby were “lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning.”
Mchunu rejected the characterisation on Friday, clarifying that the crosses were part of a temporary protest memorial erected in 2020 during a funeral procession for a white couple killed in a farm robbery, as reported by AP. “They are not graves. They don’t represent graves. It was unfortunate that those facts got twisted to fit a false narrative about crime in South Africa,” AP quoted Mchunu as saying.
He added that the protest memorial near Newcastle, in KwaZulu-Natal province, was symbolic of violence against all farmers—Black and white—over the past 26 years.
According to the report, former lawmaker Lourens Bosman, who participated in the procession, confirmed that the memorial commemorated both white and Black victims of farm killings.
South Africa continues to struggle with high violent crime rates. According to Mchunu, of the more than 5,700 homicides recorded from January to March this year, only six occurred on farms, with one white victim, the report said. “In principle, we do not categorise people by race,” he said, according to AP. “But in the context of claims of genocide of white people, we need to unpack the killings in this category.”
Mchunu labelled Trump’s claims part of his “genocide story,” an allegation the president has repeated in recent weeks. “We have respect for the president of the United States, but we have no respect for his genocide story whatsoever,” Mchunu reportedly said.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated that the video “showed crosses that represent the dead bodies of people who were racially persecuted by their government.”
Trump issued an executive order on February 7 cutting all U.S. financial assistance to South Africa, accusing the government of mistreating white Afrikaner farmers and supporting anti-American foreign policy, including its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
President Ramaphosa reportedly sought the meeting with Trump in an attempt to address these growing tensions and correct “misconceptions” about South Africa.
