Why Trump’s ‘white genocide’ claim in South Africa is false
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Hi, I'm William Lee Adams, and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service. You may have heard this clip of U.S. President Donald Trump. You're taking people's land away from them. And those people, in many cases, are being executed. They're being executed. And they happen to be white people.

And most of them happen to be farmers. He was meeting with the president of South Africa and claimed that white farmers in the country are being executed. He called it a genocide. It's a serious claim, and one South Africa's government has already debunked with statistics. So in this episode, we're going to look at where it came from, what impact it could have on how people view South Africa, and why the U.S. is now offering the white Afrikaner community refugee status in the U.S.,

I'm speaking with Nomsa Maseko, a BBC journalist, and she's been looking into this. Nomsa, hi. Hello. Where are you today? Well, I'm in sunny Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, where I'm currently working on another story. But I thought it would be a good opportunity to speak about this particular story now. Nomsa, for people who aren't in South Africa, could you describe the demographics and who lives there?

South Africa has just over 65 million people. That's the population as a whole in South Africa. More than 81% of those are black people and just over 7% make up white Afrikaners. When we talk about the Afrikaner community, could you explain what an Afrikaner is?

Well, the Afrikaner community, it's people who first settled in South Africa in the late 1600s. And they were descendants of the Dutch community. And when they started living here in South Africa, they literally took over.

you know, the agricultural economy of this country and also the politics of South Africa. And they're the ones credited for coming up with, uh, laws that were segregating against, uh, black people where black people were not allowed to be in the same spaces as white people. Um,

There was a law called apartheid, which was very much made legal in this country where the black majority was treated as subhuman. And that's who the Afrikaner community is in this country. And you mentioned apartheid there. Does the legacy of that system still shape the country today? The legacy of that system still exists in many pockets today.

This claim by President Trump, when he made that claim in the White House in front of President Cyril Ramaphosa, what was the instant or immediate reaction in South Africa? Were people shocked?

Well, South Africans were like, oh, here comes another gimmick, you know, by the U.S. president. There was an expectation that something would happen because you would remember that earlier this year, the Ukrainian president was humiliated at the White House in a meeting with Donald Trump. But South Africans certainly did not expect that there would be a video of

that would be displayed of allegations that white Afrikaners are being persecuted in this country. For our listeners who haven't seen the footage, it shows President Trump meeting with President Ramaphosa in the Oval Office in the White House. Turn the lights down.

And just put this on. It's right behind you. The lights dim and then President Trump starts playing video footage that shows rows of white crosses stretching off into the distance along a rural road. Trump made the claim that these were burial sites for white farmers and were indicative of an alleged ongoing genocide.

And I should just remind our listeners that the word genocide refers to the mass extermination of a particular group of people, and it's regarded by most people as the gravest crime against humanity.

So how and when did this claim by US President Donald Trump first come about? Well, it first came about in 1994 when South Africa became a democracy, when Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa. There were people that did not like the fact that black people were now politically in charge of the country, even though more than 30 years after democracy,

the 7% of white Afrikaners still very much own the economy of this country. So there's a lot that has happened. There's a lot that has made South Africans actually believe that, hang on, why are we now the center of attention? What's going on? You know, but there is a belief that, you know, the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, actually handled

You know, the ambush at the White House, very much like a skilled and seasoned negotiator and politician. So a lot of people have praised the president for how he carried himself during the madness, so to speak, that took place at the Oval Office. And the South African government has responded with statistics that seem to debunk this genocide claim. Could you tell us about that?

Well, it's not even just seems to debunk the genocide claims. The facts are there. And the reality of the matter is that South Africa has a huge problem when it comes to violent crime. However, the majority of those people that end up being victims of crime, including serious crimes like murder and rape and aggravated robberies,

It's people who are from the black community who are the people that are mostly affected by such crimes. In fact, the South African government, since the lies have been peddled for so many years, have made sure that rural communities, particularly farming communities,

are protected by the police. And during President Trump's meeting with President Ramaphosa, President Trump showed rows of white crosses stretching off into the distance on a rural road. Trump made a claim that these were burial sites for white farmers. That is not true. In fact, it was symbolism that was laid out. There was an incident in which a farmer and his wife were murdered.

They happen to be white in this particular incident. And the reason why there were those white crosses along the side of the road was in protest of the violent crime that is happening here in South Africa. It is not to say that those white crosses resemble burial sites for white people. In fact, the BBC just a few days ago

My colleague, Pumza Fiklani, actually visited that site and spoke to the person who erected those white crosses. And he made it clear that that was because of a protest that was taking place and that it's untrue that white people in particular are the victims of violent crime in South Africa. So we've established that this claim of genocide is false.

But could we zoom out a bit and talk about criminality? Is there a problem with farmers generally being murdered? No, there is not a problem about farmers being murdered.

So it was the first time that the South African government, when they released crime statistics last Friday, that they actually had to release crime statistics by race, which is something that they've never done. It was actually for the first time. But seeing that Donald Trump and the like

have been peddling this lie that white people, particularly Afrikaners, are the only victims of crime in South Africa was simply not true. And that is why the police minister, when he made an example of farm murders that have taken place in the first three months of this year, he made it clear that

Of the six murders that took place in commercial farms across South Africa, it was only one white Afrikaner who was killed. And also he went to dispel this notion that it's only white people who are farmers in this country, which is not the case. There are very successful black farm owners as well. And Nomsa, what's Trump's rationale in framing murders as genocide? Right.

You know, there's a lot of people that are thinking that this is a way for the U.S. and perhaps Israel to get back at South Africa, because you would recall that last year, South Africa went to the International Court of Justice and said that Israel was committing genocide. So a lot of people are thinking that this is revenge, basically, that South Africa's image is being tarnished.

To clarify, those allegations referred to the situation in Gaza. I also wanted to ask you about the dozens of white South Africans who recently arrived in the U.S. and they've been granted refugee status on the grounds that they were victims of racial discrimination. Are more applications from Afrikaners expected?

Well, it depends who you ask, because there's some Afrikaners whom I've spoken to personally who have told me that they're not going anywhere. Why would they leave such a successful and prosperous country democratically, despite the fact that, yes, there's crime, but there's many other positive things that are taking place in South Africa. So they don't want to leave. There is a small number that still says they do want to go, but they first want to check

how the 49 Afrikaners who left South Africa and became refugees in the United States are being welcomed and how their life is going to be like before they even follow them. Before you go, I just want to talk about the G20 Summit, which is coming up in South Africa. That's the group of 20, and it's a club of countries that meets to discuss global economic and political issues.

Is there a sense that President Trump's false claims about the genocide could impact the summit and indeed relations between the U.S. and South Africa moving forward? Absolutely. There's no doubt about that. There's even talk that the U.S. government had said that it wasn't going to be attending, but that would be weird because South Africa needs to hand over the presidency of the G20 to the United States. So if the United States does not attend...

who will have egg on their faces at the end of the day? You know, a lot of South Africans want to see if really, really the US or even Donald Trump himself will not pitch for the summit, which takes place in November. Nomsa, thanks for being with us. Take care. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to another episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm William Lee Adams. We'll see you again soon.