Get the Facts: Trump confronts South African president over claims of white genocide
President Donald Trump met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office on Wednesday. During the meeting, Trump confronted Ramaphosa about claims of a genocide targeting white people in South Africa.
Trump has amplified these claims over the past few weeks, stating that white farmers are being targeted and killed, specifically labeling it a genocide.
“It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about,” Trump said to reporters during a May 12 press conference. “But it’s a terrible thing that’s taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they’re white or Black, it makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
The Trump administration recently admitted a group of 59 white South Africans, also known as Afrikaners, into the U.S. as refugees.
Ramaphosa has denied that a genocide is occurring, and many experts and South Africans have called the claims unfounded.
Get the Facts here.
Claim: A genocide targeting white farmers is happening in South Africa.
Get the Facts: According to , 6,953 people were murdered in South Africa between October and December 2024. Of those, 12 were killed on a farm, though only one was a farmer, and the rest were farm dwellers and employees.
The government does not break its crime data down by race.
In February, a South African judge the notion of a genocide as "clearly imagined" and "not real" while ruling on an inheritance case concerning a wealthy benefactor’s donation to the white supremacist group Boerelegioen.
The formal definition of genocide, established in 1948 after United Nations-led negotiations, includes acts such as killing, inflicting bodily harm, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children carried out "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
The definition does not specify any exact numbers or percentages needed for an act to be considered genocide.
Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Development in Africa, that he does not believe what is happening in South Africa qualifies as a genocide.
"There is no indication of a state-sponsored campaign or intent to eliminate a specific racial group," Kaziboni said. "The primary motive remains robbery, sometimes coupled with extreme violence, consistent with broader patterns of violent crime in South Africa."
According to the BBC, — even those representing Afrikaners and the broader white community — have asserted that a genocide is taking place in the country.
Claim: "These are people that are officials and they're saying ... kill the white farmer and take their land."
Get the Facts: During the Oval Office meeting, Trump played a video for Ramaphosa that included clips of people using inflammatory and violent language at what looked like political rallies.
"At some point, there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolution," Julius Malema, who was featured prominently in the video, said in one clip.
Malema is the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a communist and Black nationalist party in South Africa. Malema was from the African National Congress (ANC) in 2012.
Ramaphosa denounced Malema's statements in the video.
"Our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying. Even in the parliament. And they are a small minority party which is allowed to exist in terms of our constitution," Ramaphosa said, referring to the EFF's place in the ANC.
South Africa's Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen — who is white — echoed Ramaphosa's remarks, stressing that the individuals featured in the video are leaders of opposition parties. Steenhuisen, who attended the Oval Office meeting, explained that his party, the Democratic Alliance, decided to ally with Ramaphosa's in order "to keep those people out of power."
In one clip, Malema sings a song with the lyrics: "Shoot the Boer, Shoot the farmer."
Boer is another name for Afrikaner farmers.
Despite attempts to get the song banned, claiming it's hate speech, South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal that Malema is within his rights to sing the song, which was popularized during the fight against apartheid.
The court said that a "reasonably well-informed person" would understand that when "protest songs are sung, even by politicians, the words are not meant to be understood literally, nor is the gesture of shooting to be understood as a call to arms or violence."
Claim: Trump shows video of an apparent burial site for "thousands" of white farmers in South Africa.
Get the Facts: The looked like it came from an X user named @realMaalouf. It showed a long line of cars on a road next to open fields. Along the road, there appeared to be white crosses.
"This is very bad," Trump said while watching the clip.
The president claimed that it showed "burial sites" for "over a thousand" white farmers.
Ramaphosa asked Trump where this was located, to which Trump said he didn't know specifically but that it was somewhere in South Africa. The location and claim that it is a burial site have not been verified.
Elon Musk, a top adviser to Trump and a native of South Africa, previously shared the video on X. Musk has also the claims of a genocide against white farmers.
Claim: "You're taking people's land away from them, and those people, in many cases, are being executed... and they happen to be white and most of them happen to be farmers."
Get the Facts: Trump stated during the Oval Office meeting that the killing of white farmers is part of a larger plan to steal land from Afrikaners.
Trump is likely referring to a recently passed law in South Africa called the .
The law permits the government to expropriate land from any private owner, regardless of race, for reasons deemed to serve the public good, such as infrastructure development, expanding public services, environmental protection, land reform, or ensuring fair distribution of resources.
Although the legislation outlines provisions for fair compensation, it also permits land to be seized without compensation under specific conditions.
Ramaphosa defended the law, saying that the country's constitution protects land ownership for all South Africans. He added that the law was instituted to "deal with the past," referencing South Africa's apartheid from 1948 to the early 1990s, which was a system of racial segregation that disenfranchised the country's majority Black population.
Ramaphosa also likened the Expropriation Act to governments in the U.S. having the power to exercise eminent domain.
"As your government also has the right to expropriate land for public use, we never really got underway with that," Ramaphosa said.
However, some Afrikaner groups fear that the new law could result in their land being taken, possibly by force, and could significantly reduce property values.
Ramaphosa also once again contested the claims of white farmers being executed, acknowledging that there are high levels of crime in South Africa, but that the majority of victims are Black.
Trump has maintained that white South Africans are facing institutional discrimination in their country. In February, Trump signed an cutting off all funding to South Africa for its supposed discriminatory policies against Afrikaners.
Afrikaners are mostly descendants of Western Europe, with the majority coming from the Netherlands, Germany and France. Afrikaners led the South African government when apartheid was introduced in 1948.
While Afrikaners make up about 7% of South Africa's population, a vast majority of the country's farmland — 80% — is owned by white farmers, according to a .
Additionally, white South Africans hold about 72% of all individually owned land, while Black South Africans own 15%.