Old video of political rally in South Africa predates diplomatic row with US over white farmers

AFP

2 days ago

'South African communists are celebrating the expropriation of land from exiled white farmers and calling for the killing of those who remain,' reads an X post published with a video on May 22, 2025.
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Screenshot of a misleading X post published on May 22, 2025
The 15-second clip shows a stadium full of people wearing red shirts, the same colours of the radical left South African political party Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
The crowd chants, 'Kill the Boer'.
The 'boers' are white Afrikaans farmers, descendants of the first Dutch settlers in South Africa. The chant, reprised in recent years by the EFF, was a popular struggle song in apartheid aimed at the repressive Afrikaner nationalist establishment.
Even after 30 years of democracy, land ownership in the country remains contentious, at home and abroad.
After South Africa's parliament ratified an amended property expropriation law earlier this year, Trump falsely accused the government of a 'white genocide' and encouraged Afrikaners, especially farmers, to apply for refugee status (archived here).
The claim circulated primarily in French, while other posts were shared in Spanish and Portuguese.
AFP Fact Check previously debunked this claim in French.
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Screenshots of similar French misleading posts published on May 20, 2025
Claims that the video shows South African 'communists' celebrating the expropriation of farms left behind by fleeing whites are misleading.
2024 EFF election rally
A reverse image search of keyframes taken from the video reveals that it appeared online as early as March 3, 2024 — long before the first group of white South Africans granted asylum arrived in the US.
It was featured in an X post about EFF's election manifesto launch which had occurred the day before (archived here).
The political party's poster on Facebook confirmed the manifesto launch date as March 2, 2024, at South Africa's Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto (archived here).
A keyword search of the EFF's YouTube account shows there was a live broadcast of the rally (archived here).
AFP Fact Check matched part of the audio in the video on X with audio about 68 minutes into the live stream.
The clip features EFF leader Julius Malema, whose party secured 9.5 percent of the vote in the country's 2024 general elections.
Malema is wearing the same white T-shirt in both the viral video (filmed from the stage) and the one posted on the EFF's YouTube channel.
We also matched people on the stage with him to confirm it was the same event: a woman in a green dress and red beret and a man in a black shirt.
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Screenshots comparing the EFF video (left) and the misleading post video (right)
Anti-apartheid song
Malema and EFF supporters are known for singing 'Kill the Boer', a song originally chanted in protest against the former racist white-minority rule regime.
The song was also part of the footage played in the Oval Office on May 21, 2025, when Trump ambushed Ramaphosa during their diplomatic meeting with a video package, as supposed proof of his claims about an ongoing genocide (archived here).
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Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa watch the video package in the Oval Office on May 21, 2025 (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / CHIP SOMODEVILLA)
But many, including South Africa's ex-president Thabo Mbeki, have said the song is not meant to be taken literally (archived here).
Ramaphosa reiterated this (archived here) on May 27, 2025, telling the media that 'it's not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to be killed'.
"We are a country where freedom of expression is in the bedrock of our constitutional arrangements," Ramaphosa added, dismissing Trump's suggestion that Malema should be arrested for singing the song.
Singing the song was banned in 2010, but the Equality Court ruled it should be seen as a historical symbol in the fight against racial segregation and not as real incitement to hatred (archived here).
In 2024, the country's Constitutional Court, the highest in the land, upheld that view (archived here).
Diplomatic tensions
At the end of January 2025, South Africa passed a law regulating expropriations and setting conditions for compensating former owners in all but exceptional cases (archived here).
Most legal experts said the law clarifies the existing framework without major changes. But Trump claims it allows the illegal seizure of land from white farmers, who owned 72 percent of agricultural land according to 2017 government data (archived here).
Trump has also accused the South African government of discrimination and of conducting a "white genocide", which AFP Fact Check previously debunked.
The US offered white farmers asylum based on this falsehood, and had welcomed around fifty people by May 12, 2025.
Local media reported that more Afrikaners also quietly arrived in the US on May 30, 2025 (archived here).