Mark Burns, Trump's top pastor, challenges genocide claims against white farmers in South Africa

Televangelist Mark Burns, described by Time magazine as US President Donald Trump's top pastor, is convinced that widespread claims that there is genocide of white farmers under way in South Africa are absolutely untrue.

Burns is visiting southern Africa, and his trip has already helped him debunk allegations of genocide against white Afrikaner farmers.

The founder and chief executive of the NOW television network has been invited for an interfaith dialogue to continue bridging the gap between religions around the world and promote peace, prosperity, and unity.

Its mission is to promote peaceful situations around the world where there are conflicts.

Burns said he sees the strong ties between the United States and South Africa, which he indicated was a beautiful thing that he will get to take back home.

“Thank God, there is no conflict here in South Africa. Your government is clearly a powerful, stable nation. The big elephant in the room – the meeting that took place in the Oval Office between President Cyril Ramaphosa and Trump,” he said.

Burns, who described Trump as his “dear friend of 12/13 years”, said the question being asked is: “Is there white genocide happening in South Africa?”

He added: “As a peace mission that I have, is white genocide taking place, are white farmers being targeted or having their land taken away forcibly in this country? I have been just blown away by having great access to white Afrikaner farmers and those that represent farmers from around your entire country.”

Burns said he has met small and commercial farmers and was able to meet with white business manufacturing owners and hear from their perspectives what is actually happening in South Africa.

“Not to my shock again, you were able to hear their perspectives. From their point of view, being white Afrikaners, there is absolutely no genocide or white genocide in South Africa. They believe Trump was fed erroneous information for whatever reason they don’t know,” Burns explained.

He said in his understanding, the farmers he met were all shocked to discover that such a thing as white genocide was happening in South Africa.

“From that point of view, they pivoted that there absolutely is a crime issue, there is a high murder rate, and many of them spoke about worrying about their safety, not because they are white but because they don’t feel as protected as they should be,” Burns stated.

He said he was informed in the meetings that over 5,200 murders had occurred in the last reporting quarter and that only 12 of them were related to farmers.

“And out of those 12, only three of them were white. You clearly see that based on those statistics, and this was given to me by a farmer, a white farmer, and that to me speaks extreme volumes,” he said.

Releasing the 2024/25 fourth quarter crime statistics a week ago, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu said there were  5,727 murders in the three months between January and March this year.

He said six attacks on rural communities were recorded.

“In principle, we do not categorise people by race, but in the context of claims of genocide of white people, we need to unpack the killings in this category. The two farm owners who were murdered during the fourth quarter were African and not white. Further to that, the two farm employees and one farm manager were also African – it is the one farm dweller that was white,” added Mchunu.

Turning to key matters of trade between the US and South Africa, Burns said: “This is a nation that we need to continue to partner with, this is a nation that is one of our important partners on the continent of Africa and that we ought to continue to strengthen that relationship and to do whatever it takes to make sure that we have good trading deals with each other.”

His message back in his country will be “come to South Africa, invest in South Africa. We have so much that we are similar”.

Burns said the purpose of that is to create jobs here in South Africa, to entice more American investors to invest in South Africa.

He also acknowledged that the AGOA (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act) Forum, scheduled to be held in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in July, would be difficult, especially after Trump imposed 31% tariffs on goods imported from South Africa in April.

Burns warned South Africa against remaining a member of the BRICS bloc of countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, and China, as well as its newest members, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

“BRICS is a challenge, though, that needs to be addressed, and if I were advising your President Ramaphosa to remove that 'S’ from the title BRICS immediately,” he said.

According to Burns, while BRICS was initially established to enable access to different markets, the country should declare to Vladimir Putin (the Russian president) that it will not be a party to the devaluation of the US dollar and introduce a separate currency.

BRICS also includes Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan as partner countries.

Burns expressed optimism on Trump’s possible attendance at the G20 in Johannesburg in November, when the US takes over the year-long presidency from South Africa.

“It’s good for the world that he comes to the continent of Africa and sees what I’m seeing and what I am going to echo back to the US and why South Africa is a key partner to us in this region. If we are going to continue to make America great, partnering with South Africa is one of the components to do it,” he said.

Burns believes a stronger South Africa is a stronger America and vice versa.

loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za