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A week ago, Elon Musk – one of the leading purveyors of false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa – tweeted out a clip purportedly showing the graves of hundreds of slain white farmers.
“So many crosses,” Musk noted.
That same clip made it into the video montage that Donald Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with during Wednesday’s meeting at the Oval Office, which the president insisted was “evidence” of mass murders of white Afrikaners in Ramaphosa’s country.
The video, meanwhile, showed white crucifixes lining a South African highway while a row of cars and vehicles drove slowly by. According to Trump, this was essentially a mass graveyard where the families of murdered white farmers could mourn the loss of their loved ones.
“Those are burial sites — over a thousand — of white farmers,” Trump bellowed. “And those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there’s approximately a thousand of them. They’re all white farmers.”
Trump added: “And those cars aren’t driving. They’re stopped there to pay respect to the family member who was killed. It’s a terrible sight, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
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When Ramaphosa asked Trump for the location of the “burial site” because he’d never seen it before, the president merely said that “it’s in South Africa.”
It would appear that the supposed roadside cemetery full of “genocide” victims was actually a tribute to two farmers who were killed in Normandien, South Africa, in August 2020. At the same time, the demonstration was meant to raise awareness over farm killings in the country.
Shortly after the tense and chaotic White House meeting, which also featured the president waving around copies of tabloid articles that he claimed represented “thousands of stories” about “death, death, death,” CNN aired a segment providing necessary context on Trump’s video montage.
“He was claiming that there was a thousand roadside graves,” CNN anchor Boris Sanchez stated. “Apparently, this is a video that had been of a political statement made by a specific political party in South Africa, but not of actual gravesites, just a political demonstration to highlight violence against farmers.”
CNN correspondent Larry Madowo, who resides in South Africa, pointed out that South African Minister for Agriculture John Steenhuisen – a white man and a political opponent of Ramaphosa – said during the White House meeting that the nation has a rural crime problem that affects both white and Black farmers and workers.
“If 1,000 white farmers died in South Africa, it would be impossible to hide that,” Madowo said, adding: “This was overall a very good day for white supremacists in South Africa, because they got the validation they could have never imagined from the highest office in the land.”
Meanwhile, the clip that Trump hyped as a “burial site” of “over a thousand” white farmers was initially filmed on September 5, 2020. The tribute alongside the highway was done in response to the murders of Glen and Vida Rafferty, a white farming couple who were shot dead outside their home. An organizer of the demonstration, meanwhile, told South Africa’s public broadcaster that the crucifixes symbolized farmers who had been killed over time.
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At the time of the demonstration, South Africa’s Sunday Tribune reported the following about the convoy of vehicles that drove along the road strewn with white crosses:
“Their deaths ramped up calls from community leaders, rights groups and politicians who roundly condemned the country’s latest farm killings, with some calling for more prioritised police focus.
“On Saturday, a convoy of hundreds of ‘concerned Newcastle citizens’ went on a round-trip which looped through the city centre and around the Rafferty’s farm to pay respect to the couple and raise awareness about farm killings.
“Bob Hoatson, who took part in the procession, said the initiative was not about white farmers: ‘It was for people from all walks of life who were concerned about farm murders,’ said Hoatson.”
Four men were eventually convicted of the Raffertys’ murders, receiving life imprisonment for ambushing and killing the couple as part of an armed robbery scheme. At the same time, the Raffertys’ murders were cited by right-wing groups as further evidence of “white genocide,” especially since their killings occurred just hours after tens of thousands of motorcyclists had demanded more action be taken against farm murders.
The demonstration somewhat resembles the Witkruis Monument, a hillside memorial between Mokopane and Polokwane that features roughly 3,000 metal crosses marking the deaths of South African farmers.
While the White House did not comment on the record about the president’s video montage, a White House official told The Independent that there was extensive evidence of persecution of white farmers in South Africa, including the 59 Afrikaner refugees who recently arrived in the United States.
Additionally, the official pointed to an Associated Press photograph of the Witkruis Monument as proof of memorials commemorating the white farmers killed over the years in South Africa.
Among the rest of the evidence that the president displayed on Wednesday, which supposedly supported his claims about a genocide against white South Africans, was a blog post featuring a photo from another country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
As he flipped through a stack of printouts of articles, Trump shouted: “Death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death!”
Trump also claimed that the reports were all published in “the last few days,” and were about “people that recently got killed.” However, according to Barron’s, one article – which is from the little-known blog American Thinker – showed an image of Red Cross workers handling body bags. “Look, here’s burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried,” Trump declared.
Instead, as Barron’s pointed out, the image was a screenshot of a months-old YouTube video of “Red Cross workers responding after women were raped and burned alive during a mass jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma.”
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Much of the rest of the video Trump aired during the meeting largely included out-of-context footage of far-left opposition leader Julius Malema and other extremist figures shouting the controversial anti-apartheid slogans “kill the Boer” and “kill the farmers.” Ramaphosa, for his part, kept his cool and denounced Malema’s rhetoric while pointing out that he represents a fringe element.
“We have a multi-party democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves, political parties to adhere to various policies. And in many cases, or in some cases, those policies do not go along with government policy,” he told Trump. “Our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying, even in the Parliament, and they’re a small minority party which is allowed to exist in terms of our Constitution.”
Despite the assertions of the president, who has fast-tracked the refugee status of white Afrikaners and cut off aid to South Africa primarily due to the “white genocide” conspiracy theory, the facts don’t support the claims that white South Africans are being killed en masse in order to seize their farmland.
According to South African police data, 225 people were killed on farms in South Africa from March 2020 to April 2024. One hundred and one of those victims were either current or former workers living on farms, most of whom are Black. Fifty-three of those murdered were farmers, who tend to be white.
“South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, of which 44 were linked to farming communities,” Reuters noted. “Of those, eight of the victims were farmers.”
