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United States President Donald Trump has clashed with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over claims of white genocide and land seizures, and persecuted farmers fleeing to Australia.
Ramaphosa had hoped to use a meeting with Trump at the White House to reset South Africa’s relationship with the US and discuss trade and tariffs.
The video was made in September 2020 during a protest after two people were killed on their farm a week earlier.
The crosses did not mark actual graves. An organiser of the protest told South Africa’s public broadcaster at the time that they represented farmers who had been killed over the years.
Trump also produced a stack of printed news articles, which he said showed “death, death, death” of white people in South Africa.
“We have many people who feel they are being persecuted and they’re coming to the United States,” he said.
“We take from many locations if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on, and we had a lot of people, I must tell you, Mr President, we have had a tremendous number of people … generally they’re white farmers and they’re fleeing South Africa and it’s a very sad thing to see,” Trump said.
Trump also claimed Australia was being “inundated” with white South Africans fleeing persecution.
It’s not the first time Australia has been involved in discussions about the plight of white farmers in South Africa.
When have white South African farmers made headlines before?
“It’s a horrific circumstance that they face and Australia has a refugee and humanitarian program, as well as a number of other visa programs, where we have the potential to help some of these people that are being persecuted,” he said at the time.
“I think these people deserve special attention and we are certainly applying that special attention now.”
At the time, South African government spokesperson Ndivhuwo Mabaya said there was no reason to suspect any part of the country’s population was in danger from its leaders.
“There’s no need for anyone to be scared or to fear anything,” he told the BBC.
“The land redistribution program will be done according to the law. We want to say to our friends across the world that there’s no need to panic.
“We remain a united nation here in South Africa — both black and white.”
South Africa’s foreign ministry also dismissed Dutton’s comments, and said it regretted that Australia “chose not to use the available diplomatic channels available for them to raise concerns or to seek clarification”.
South Africa also demanded a retraction of Dutton’s comments.
Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop, who were prime minister and foreign minister at the time, later implicitly retracted the comments in a letter.
In 2024, there were approximately 224,000 Australian residents born in South Africa, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, representing 0.8 per cent of Australia’s 27.2 million people. That was up from 195,000 in 2019, and 174,000 in 2014 when this group represented about the same portion of the total population — 0.7 per cent.
The data does not include details about race, ethnicity, or occupation, so it is unclear whether the proportion of white South African farmers among new arrivals has changed over time. Long-term population increases may also reflect a range of factors, including family reunification and skilled migration in other sectors.
SBS News has contacted the Department of Home Affairs for comment.
What was the response to Trump’s genocide claims?
Responding to the video in the meeting with Trump, Ramaphosa denied the genocide claims and said the speeches shown in the video did not reflect government policy.
“Our government policy is completely against what he was saying, even in the parliament, and they’re a small minority party which is allowed to exist in terms of our constitution,” he said.
“But you do allow them to take land,” Trump responded.
“And when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.”
This conspiracy theory has been propagated by some fringe groups of white South Africans since the end of apartheid in 1994. It has been circulating in global far-right chat rooms for at least a decade.
Supporters of the theory point to murders of white farmers in remote rural parts of the country as proof of a politically orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing, rather than ordinary violent crime.
They accuse the Black-majority led government of being complicit in the farm murders, either by encouraging them or at least turning a blind eye. The government strongly denies this.
South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with an average of 72 a day, in a country of 60 million people, according to a report by the Reuters news agency. Most victims are Black.
South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, of which 44 were linked to farming communities. Of those, eight of the victims were farmers.
“In fact, the reality of violent crime in South Africa is that white people, white South Africans, are significantly less likely to be victims of violent crime and that’s true whether they live on farms or whether they lived in cities or suburban areas,” Carolyn Holmes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, told Reuters.
“The modal victim of violent crime in South Africa is a Black person. And in fact, we can see this in any number of police statistics, both provided by the South African Police Service and international observers,” Holmes said.
Elon Musk has been a proponent of claims of white genocide in South Africa. Source: AAP / Sipa
She said the narrative of a white genocide was not broadly taken seriously in South Africa and was mostly promoted internationally or by paramilitary groups.
“Most famously, probably, and most publicly, Elon Musk has been a major proponent of this.
“And we saw this in not only his own personal statements, but allegations that he manipulated the Grok [AI bot] algorithm to sort of foreground this narrative of white genocide, but it is not actually something that people in South Africa take seriously at all.”
