US President Donald Trump made serious allegations during South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's visit to the White House. He claimed that mass killings of white farmers are taking place in South Africa.
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But the narrative that the white population is being systematically and deliberately destroyed is not supported by facts or official statistics. Such claims have been circulating in right-wing circles for years and are linked to the racist "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
The claim: "These are cemeteries. Thousands of white crosses. These are all white farmers and their families. They were all killed." That's how US President Trump commented on a video he showed during a meeting with the South African president on May 21 at the White House.
Deutsche Welle (DW) fact check: false
Trump's claim had been circulating on social media even before Ramaphosa's visit to the United States. On May 12, a user of the X platform posted that each cross represented a murdered white farmer in South Africa. The video has been viewed almost 55 million times (as of May 22).
An image search on the internet showed that the video footage with white crosses along the road, which Trump used, had already circulated on social media in 2020 and 2023. It is not, as Trump claims, about the graves of more than a thousand murdered farmers.
"Ramaphosa, how many more have to die?"
The scenes actually show a protest action near the South African city of Newcastle on September 5, 2020. The protest was sparked by the murder of married couple Glen and Vida Rafferty on their farm in August of that year.
This was reported, among other things, by the South African newspaper Newcastle Advertiser: "Trucks, tractors, trucks, vans, limousines, scooters, motorcycles, helicopters and planes – vehicles of all kinds were today (September 5) part of the Move ONE Million protest march deep into Normandy. […] Just beyond the bridge over the River Horn, volunteers had placed hundreds of symbolic wooden crosses along the road. Halfway towards Hanover, the farm where Glen and Vida Rafferty were killed, a huge banner was erected: 'President Ramaphosa, how many more must die?'"
In the second part of the video used by Trump, South African politician Julius Malema is shown chanting the slogan: "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer."
The footage was taken at the FNB National Stadium in Johannesburg, where the left-wing South African party Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) celebrated its tenth anniversary in August 2023. The event was reported by South African broadcaster SABC News, as well as other media outlets.
Dangerous hate speech
Julius Malema was a member of South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party before the EFF was founded, but was expelled from the party in 2012. The song is an old battle cry from the apartheid era in South Africa and has been repeatedly declared hate speech.
South African President Ramaphosa immediately distanced himself from the statements made in the video after it was shown. "These speeches are not part of government policy," the president said.
South African farmer Theo de Jaeger also told Deutsche Welle that there is no genocide against white farmers in his country. After Trump recently offered white farmers asylum in the US, De Jaeger wrote him an open letter.
"I wrote a letter to Trump because I'm afraid he doesn't fully understand what's going on here," he told DW. "We'd rather see him take action to make concrete improvements to our situation, so we can solve our own problems. It's not just about racism, because black farmers have similar problems."
Land distribution in South Africa remains highly unequal, more than 30 years after the end of apartheid. According to a 2017 South African government report, white people own about 72 percent of agricultural land, while black South Africans own only about four percent of individually registered farms. White South Africans make up just 7,8 percent of the total population of South Africa.
This article was translated from German and was created in collaboration with the fact-checking teams of the public service broadcasters ARD-Faktenfinder, BR24 #Faktenfuchs and DW Faktencheck.
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