There is no ‘white genocide' in South Africa. But Trump has made up his mind

Telegraph

22-05-2025

As Donald Trump confronted the South African president in an extraordinary meeting in the Oval Office, he clutched a sheaf of news reports he said showed mass killings of white farmers.
In a powerful stroke of political theatre, he reeled off the fate of each of the people in the stories. 'Death, death, death, horrible death, death,' he intoned as he went through each example.
The reports along with a video of incendiary speeches from firebrand opposition politicians threatening to steal white land, or attack white people, showed Cyril Ramaphosa was allowing a genocide to occur, he suggested.
Such claims have been circulating for years and were also raised in 2018 during Mr Trump's first term, but the accusation has now become so ubiquitous it is a significant obstacle in South Africa's attempts to reset relations with Washington.
Accusations that white people in South Africa are victims of a genocide have become a rallying cry for Right-wing groups in Europe and the US.
The claims have roots in South Africa's appalling levels of violent crime; in unresolved racial tensions over the distribution of land and in the very real fears of exposed rural communities.
Yet researchers say the claims are also false and that while white farmers have been killed, it is as part of a pattern of crime, extreme violence and lawlessness across the country.
They say the attacks are motivated by opportunistic criminality, are not part of a concerted campaign, and that black people, including black farmers, are far more likely to be killed.
None of South Africa's political parties, including those representing Afrikaners, allege a 'white genocide' is underway.
A South African judge in February ruled the idea of a genocide was 'clearly imagined' and 'not real', when deciding an inheritance case involving a wealthy benefactor's donation to the Boerelegioen right wing paramilitary group.
'The idea of a 'white genocide' taking place in South Africa is completely false,' said Gareth Newham, head of a justice and violence prevention program at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa.
'As an independent institute tracking violence and violent crime in South Africa, if there was any evidence of either a genocide or targeted violence taking place against any group based on their ethnicity this, we would be amongst the first to raise (the) alarm and provide the evidence to the world.'
'Murder' case with no murders
The fact that the reality was different than Mr Trump suggested was illustrated by the very first murder case study that he held up.
The first cutting reported an attack on 73-year-old Jan Jurgens in his farm outside Mbombela, in the country's north-east.
Mr Jurgens was not killed as Mr Trump said, however, though he was badly hurt when armed intruders attacked him and tied him up last week.
Mr Jurgens' wife, Antoinette, was also attacked when she returned home. She managed to fight them off and lock herself in the house and alert staff on the farm. The attackers fled with a HP laptop, a mobile phone, and a handbag containing bank cards and an ID.
The fear of such crime is widespread in rural South Africa, where the majority of farmland is still owned by white farmers and police are accused of doing too little to protect them or catch the culprits. Attackers can use horrific violence.
Adding to the sense of being under siege are the incendiary speeches by populists like Julius Malema of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) who preaches the redistribution of land.
He also leads supporters in a song with the refrain 'kill the boer', which critics say is an incitement to violence against white farmers.
Most people killed in South Africa are black
But researchers say that while violent crime is rife in South Africa, the vast majority of victims are black and poor, and white people are not being deliberately targeted.
Quarterly figures show that around 75 people are murdered in the country each day. That compares with fewer than two murders each day in England and Wales, with a similar population size.
Police statistics show that nearly 7,000 people were killed in the last three months of 2024 and of those, 12 murders occurred on farms. The data do not record race, but one of those killed was a farmer and the rest were farm workers, people staying on farms and a security guard.
When Mr Trump earlier this year raised the issue, the chief of South Africa's largest farm lobby group, AgriSA, denied farmers were being killed for political reasons.
Johann Kotzé said: 'Crime in South Africa is too high. If a murder is on a farm, we call it a farm murder. But remember that same night somebody was also murdered in the little township where the farm workers came from.'
At a major agricultural fair last week in the Free State province, farmers told reporters that they were worried about safety and the lack of government help, but said the crime was affecting everyone.
Thobani Ntonga, a black farmer from Eastern Cape province, told Associated Press he had been attacked on his farm by criminals and almost kidnapped before a neighbour intervened.
He said: 'Crime affects both black and white. ... It's an issue of vulnerability.
'Farmers are separated from your general public. We're not near towns, we are in the rural areas. And I think it's exactly that. So, perpetrators, they thrive on that, on the fact that farms are isolated.'
Prof Rudolph Zinn, a criminologist at the University of Limpopo, has interviewed dozens of convicted farm attackers and said in all cases he had found they were driven by financial gain. Attackers sought cash or goods, and often saw farms as soft targets.
Mr Ramaphosa, backed by his delegation and mutual friends of Mr Trump like Ernie Els and the businessman Johann Rupert, will be trying to make these arguments to the US government.
Their fear is that Mr Trump does not really want to listen.