US President Donald Trump shows pictures as he meets with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2025. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa meets Donald Trump on Wednesday amid tensions over Washington's resettlement of white Afrikaners that the US president claims are the victims of "genocide."
Image: Jim WATSON / AFP
In a dimly lit Oval Office, President Donald Trump played a video for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
A dirt road lined with white crosses, tractors, and grieving figures.
“These are burial sites. Over a thousand white farmers,” Trump said solemnly.
But the video told a different story.
Ramaphosa met with Trump on Wednesday at the White House to discuss diplomatic and economic relations.
The footage, reposted by Elon Musk and widely circulated online, was from a 2020 memorial in Newcastle, South Africa.
It honoured a murdered farming couple. The white crosses? Symbolic, temporary markers—planted by community members, not signs of mass graves.
A New York Times investigation confirmed the scene had been grossly misrepresented. Google Street View from 2023 showed the crosses had long since vanished.
Still, Trump persisted, waving printouts from incendiary sources like American Thinker, he pointed to headlines and photos—some completely unrelated.
One image, showing Red Cross workers with body bags, was from the Democratic Republic of Congo after a prison break. It had no connection to South African farmers.
“Death of people, death, horrible death,” Trump intoned, flipping through the stack.
“These are all white farmers that are being buried.”
But South African data tells another story. While farm murders do occur and are deeply tragic, they are part of a broader epidemic of violence.
"We have too many deaths, but it's across the board. It's not only white farmers," he told Trump.
On average, 75 people are murdered daily in South Africa—most of them young Black men in urban areas.
The claim that white farmers are being uniquely targeted lacks statistical backing.
For Trump, though, this wasn’t about evidence—it was about optics.
The Oval Office scene unfolded more like theater: emotional, racially charged, and deeply misleading.
Ramaphosa sat silent but the South African businessman, Johan Rupert, explained it better when asked about the murders in the country.
Rupert admitted to murders but clarified that it was not only white people who were killed. “It's across the board,” he said.
The episode highlighted a troubling pattern: how viral imagery, misinformation, and the credibility of a president can combine to create a potent, false narrative.
By invoking “white genocide,” Trump not only amplified a long-debunked conspiracy theory but also risked inflaming racial tensions in both countries.
What was meant to be a diplomatic engagement became a warning. In a world saturated with misinformation, perception can be weaponised.
Trump couldn’t answer Ramaphosa’s question about where the video came from.
He instead pulled out another clip of the EFF leader, Julius Malema, chanting and singing “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” and said this also contributed to the killing of white people.
In response, Ramaphosa said Malema was not part of the government and his views were not supported.
Meanwhile, Trump did not rule out attending the G20 summit in South Africa later this year.
kamogelo.moichela@iol.co.za
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