US President Donald Trump clashed with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over allegations of white genocide and land seizures and farmers fleeing to Australia.
Ramaphosa hoped to use a meeting with Trump at the White House to reset relations between South Africa and the US and discuss trade and tariffs.
The video was made during a protest in September 2020 after two people were killed on the farm a week ago.
The cross did not mark the actual tomb. The protest organizers told the South African public broadcaster at the time that they were representing farmers who had been killed over the years.
Trump also created a stack of printed news stories. He said he showed “death, death, death” for white South Africans.
“We have a lot of people who feel they are being persecuted. They're coming to the US,” he said.
“If we feel persecution or genocide is ongoing, we take it from a lot of places. We had a lot of people. President, we had a huge number of people… They are generally white farmers and are fleeing South Africa.
Trump also claimed that Australia was “inundated” with white South Africans who fled persecution.
It is not the first time Australia has been involved in a discussion of the light-forming form of South African white farmers.
When did white South African farmers make headlines before?
“They face it, there are refugee and humanitarian programs in Australia, there are many other visa programs, and many other visa programs that could support some of these people who are being persecuted,” he said at the time.
“I think these people deserve special attention. We certainly pay that special attention.”
At the time, South African government spokesman Ndivhuwo Mabaya said there was no reason to suspect that a portion of the country's population was at risk from its leaders.
“No one needs to be scared or afraid of anything,” he told the BBC.
“The land redistribution programme is carried out according to the law. We would like to tell friends all over the world that there is no need to panic.
“We are a unified nation here in South Africa, both black and white.”
South Africa's Foreign Ministry also rejected Dutton's comments, saying that Australia “remorried that it chose not to use available diplomatic channels to raise concerns or seek clarification.
South Africa also requested that Dutton's comment be withdrawn.
Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop, who were the prime ministers and foreign ministers at the time, later implicitly retracted the comments.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2024 there were approximately 224,000 Australian residents born in South Africa. This accounts for 0.8% of Australia's 27.2 million people. This represented 0.7%, an increase from 195,000 in 2019 to 174,000 in 2014, representing the group roughly the same portion of the total population.
As the data do not include details about race, ethnicity, or occupation, it is unclear whether the proportion of white South African farmers during the new arrivals changed over time. Long-term population growth may reflect a variety of factors, including family unity and skilled migration in other sectors.
SBS News reached the Ministry of Home Affairs for comment.
What was your reaction to Trump's genocide claim?
In response to a video of the meeting with Trump, Ramaphosa denied the genocide claims, saying the speech shown in the video did not reflect government policies.
“Our government policies are completely opposed to what he was saying, even in Congress, and they are minority parties that are permitted to exist in our constitutional viewpoint,” he said.
“But you allow them to take the land,” Trump replied.
“And when they take the land, they kill the white farmers, and when they kill the white farmers, nothing happens to them.”
This theory of conspiracy has been spread by several fringe groups of white South Africans since the end of apartheid in 1994. It has been distributed in far-right chat rooms around the world for at least 10 years.
Supporters of the theory point to the murder of white farmers in remote parts of the country as evidence of a politically organized campaign of ethnic cleansing rather than a normal violent crime.
They accused the majority of black people of their government of being complicit in farm murders by encouraging them, or at least turning their eyes off. The government has strongly denied this.
South Africa is one of the highest murder rates in the world, with an average of 72 people per day and a country of 60 million people, according to a Reuters news agency. Most of the victims are black.
South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, of which 44 were linked to the farming community. Of these, eight casualties were farmers.
“In fact, the reality of violent crime in South Africa is that white South Africans are significantly less likely to be victims of violent crimes, whether they live on farms, cities, or out of the suburbs.”
“The modal victims of violent crime in South Africa are black. In fact, you can see this in the number of police statistics provided by South African police services and international observers,” Holmes said.
Elon Musk is a supporter of claims about the white massacre in South Africa. Source: AAP/SIPA
She said the white genocide story was not taken widely and seriously in South Africa and was primarily promoted by international or paramilitary groups.
“The most famous one is perhaps and most publicly, Elon Musk was a major supporter of this.
“And we saw not only his own personal statement, but with his claim that he manipulated the Grok (AI BOT) algorithm to foreground this white genocide story, which is not actually something that South Africans take seriously.”
