Trump claims there is a 'genocide' in South Africa, but white Afrikaner farmers dispute that assertion
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May 21, 2025
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A meeting on Wednesday between President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and American President Donald Trump intended to discuss trade and diplomatic relations turned tense when Trump played a video claiming to show South Africans attempting to harm white Afrikaners.
Trump claimed to have heard "thousands of stories" about white South African's facing violence, but Ramaphosa, who is a cattle farmer himself, denied it.
According to PBS, experts say that, while there is a large amount of violent crime in South Africa, it does not land disproportionately on white residents. In South Africa, white peoples make up 7 percent of the population and own about 80 percent of the farmland.
The connection between the two countries remains strained. The Trump administration stopped relief to South Africa and accused their government of aiding in violence against Afrikaners—White South Africans.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated earlier in May that Afrikaners escaping persecution are welcome to come to the United States.
At an agricultural fair in Bothaville May 21, South Africans expressed confusion about the Trump administration's choices:
"Crime affects both Black and white," said Thobani Ntonga, a Black farmer from Eastern Cape. "…It’s an issue of vulnerability. Farmers are separated from your general public. We're not near towns, we are in the rural areas."
"Crime especially hits small-scale farmers worse because they don't have resources for private security," Afrikaner farmer Willem de Chavonnes Vrugt told the press. He went on to wonder why farmers would want to leave the land where their families had worked for generations.
Sources
[edit]- Trump says there's a 'genocide' in South Africa, but white Afrikaner farmers reject that claim — PBS, May 21, 2025
- Ian Stark and Allen Cone. Tensions flare during Trump meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — UPI, May 21, 2025