By GERALD IMRAY and MICHELLE GUMEDE
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s prime legislation enforcement official mentioned Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump wrongly claimed {that a} video he confirmed within the Oval Workplace was of burial websites for greater than 1,000 white farmers and he “twisted” the details to push a false narrative about mass killings of white folks in his nation.
Police Minister Senzo Mchunu was speaking a couple of video clip that was performed through the assembly between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on the White Home on Wednesday that confirmed an aerial view of a rural highway with traces of white crosses erected on both aspect.
“Now this is very bad,” Trump mentioned as he referred to the clip that was a part of an extended video that was performed within the assembly. “These are burial sites, right here. Burial sites, over a thousand, of white farmers, and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning.”
Mchunu mentioned the crosses didn’t mark graves or burial websites, however had been a short lived memorial put up in 2020 to protest the killings of all farmers throughout South Africa. They had been put up throughout a funeral procession for a white couple who had been killed in a theft on their farm, Mchunu mentioned.
A son of the couple who had been killed and a local people member who took half within the procession additionally mentioned the crosses don’t characterize burial websites and had been taken down after the protest.
South Africa struggles with extraordinarily excessive ranges of violent crime, though farm killings make up a small share of the nation’s total homicides. Each white and Black farmers are attacked, and generally killed, and the federal government has condemned the violence in opposition to each teams.
Whites make up round 7% of South Africa’s 62 million folks however usually nonetheless have a a lot better lifestyle than the Black majority greater than 30 years after the top of the apartheid system of racial segregation. Whites make up nearly all of the nation’s wealthier business farmers.
Mchunu mentioned Trump’s false claims that the crosses represented greater than 1,000 burial websites was a part of his “genocide story” — referring to the U.S. president’s baseless allegations in latest weeks that there’s a widespread marketing campaign in South Africa to kill white farmers and take their land that he has mentioned quantities to a genocide.
“They are not graves. They don’t represent graves,” Mchunu mentioned concerning the video that has turn out to be outstanding on social media because it was proven within the White Home. “And it was unfortunate that those facts got twisted to fit a false narrative about crime in South Africa.”
“We have respect for the president of the United States,” Mchunu added. “But we have no respect for his genocide story whatsoever.”
President Donald Trump meets South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa within the Oval Workplace of the White Home, Wednesday, Might 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photograph/Evan Vucci)
The White Home, when requested about Mchunu’s remarks, pointed again to press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s feedback a day earlier at her briefing, when she mentioned that “the video showed crosses that represent the dead bodies of people who were racially persecuted by their government.”
Of the greater than 5,700 homicides in South Africa from January by means of March, six occurred on farms and, of these, one sufferer was white, mentioned Mchunu. “In principle, we do not categorize people by race, but in the context of claims of genocide of white people, we need to unpack the killings in this category,” he mentioned.
Lourens Bosman, who’s a former lawmaker within the nationwide Parliament, mentioned he took half within the procession proven within the video the Trump administration performed. It occurred close to the city of Newcastle within the jap province of KwaZulu-Natal in September 2020. The crosses had been symbols to white and Black farmers and farmworkers who had been killed throughout South Africa over the earlier 26 years, Bosman mentioned.
Trump’s falsehoods that South Africa’s authorities is fueling the persecution and killing of its minority white farmers has been strongly denied by the nation, which says the allegations are rooted in misinformation.
Ramaphosa pushed for this week’s assembly with Trump in what he mentioned was an try to vary Trump’s thoughts over South Africa and proper misconceptions in regards to the nation to rebuild ties.
Trump issued an government order on Feb. 7 that reduce all U.S. monetary help to South Africa and accused it of mistreating white Afrikaner farmers and seizing their land. The order accused Ramaphosa’s authorities of “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
Trump’s government order additionally accused South Africa of pursuing an anti-American overseas coverage and particularly criticized its determination to launch a case on the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice accusing U.S. ally Israel of genocide in opposition to Palestinians in Gaza. The order accused South Africa of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas by means of that case.
Initially Printed: Might 23, 2025 at 7:47 PM EDT
