US President Donald Trump, proper, and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, second proper, as a video performs throughout a gathering within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Could 21, 2025.
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JOHANNESBURG — President Trump claims a “genocide” of white individuals, notably Afrikaner farmers, is going down in South Africa.
When he met the nation’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, within the Oval Workplace on Wednesday, Trump performed him a video — beforehand shared a minimum of twice on social media by his advisor Elon Musk — that he stated was proof of this.
“Now that is very unhealthy, these are burial websites proper there. Burial websites. Over a thousand. Of white farmers,” Trump stated, “I’ve by no means seen something prefer it.”
The video confirmed a street lined on both aspect with scores of white crosses and a procession of vehicles carrying mourners paying their respects.
A startled Ramaphosa requested Trump the place the placement was, saying he’d by no means seen the video earlier than. South Africa, replied Trump.
It was certainly a video taken in South Africa, in KwaZulu-Natal province.
However, it was not a burial web site.
“My dad and mom Glen and Vida Rafferty had been murdered, or gunned down, by six males on their farm in 2020, so these crosses had been erected as a memorial on the day of their funeral,” Nathan Rafferty instructed NPR.
Rafferty, a white South African who now lives in Brisbane, Australia, defined the “local people used it as a method of protest and to pay tribute.”
Opposite to Trump’s claims, no our bodies had been ever buried alongside that street and the white crosses do not mark graves.
Requested on Thursday if the president bought it improper, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave this clarification.
“What’s unsubstantiated concerning the video? The video reveals crosses that signify the useless our bodies of people that had been racially persecuted by their authorities,” she stated.
The crosses did not signify a selected variety of farm homicide victims, they had been a symbolic tribute to the murdered couple.
In the course of the assembly, Trump additionally held up a printout of a weblog publish exhibiting a photograph taken by Reuters , from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, mistakenly claiming it was taken in South Africa.
Rafferty stated he was shocked when he noticed the video proven within the Oval Workplace assembly.
“The very last thing you count on to see are a number of the most traumatic components of your life proven on worldwide TV. So it was completely surprising,” he stated.
“It clearly opened a number of new wounds.”
The assailants had been planning to rob his dad and mom, based on information reviews on the time. Although they’d aimed to get into the secure, in the long run, they solely stole a automobile and some objects of little worth.
Whereas many murders in South Africa stay unsolved, three of the Rafferty’s murderers had been tried and two of them had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
NPR requested Rafferty what he thought concerning the white “genocide” suggestion from the Trump administration.
“Do I feel that there is a focused genocide program of some type?” he stated. “No I do not.”
Nevertheless, Rafferty stated he thinks rather more must be executed to stop and condemn what are generally brutal assaults.
“I by no means went farming as a result of I used to be frightened of the tinderbox that it’s, regardless of having 4 generations of farmers in my household,” he added.
South Africa’s authorities would not deny the nation suffers a number of the highest crime charges on this planet. Members of Ramaphosa’s delegation to Washington had been frank about this being an enormous downside.
On Friday, South Africa launched its quarterly crime statistics. These should not often damaged down by race, however given Trump’s assaults, police stated they had been making an exception.
From January to March 2025, six individuals had been killed on farms in South Africa, police stated.
Out of these six, one was white.
“The historical past of farm murders within the nation has at all times been distorted and reported in an unbalanced means; the reality is that farm murders have at all times included African individuals in additional numbers,” stated Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, referring to Black Africans.
Mchunu additionally spoke concerning the Rafferty case, throughout which the couple “had been sadly murdered by criminals of their house.”
“The incident sparked a really robust protest by the farming neighborhood within the space. The crosses symbolized killings on farms over years, they don’t seem to be graves,” Mchunu stated.
“And it was unlucky that these information bought twisted to suit a false narrative about crime in South Africa.”
