JOHANNESBURG — South Africans welcomed President Donald Trump‘s highly critical Oval Office statements Wednesday about killings in the country, according to analysts. 

The President showed video clips and gave South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa a sheaf of news clippings he said show farm murders. 

Many believe this “ambush” by President Trump toward the South African leader is good for the country, because it throws a sharp light on the darkness that is the high level of killings in the country, and how President Ramaphosa’s government is said to be failing to adequately tackle it.

Approximately 6,953 people of all races were murdered in South Africa in just the last three months of 2024, according to police statistics. That is 76 people on average killed every day. 

Losi continued, “And the problem in South Africa, it is not necessarily about race, but it is about crime. And we think that we are here to say, how do we both nations work together to reset, to really talk about investment … to really address the levels of crime that we have in our country. “

Sources say that after previously refusing to let Elon Musk bring his Starlink satellite communications system into South Africa, citing the need for local partial ownership, Ramaphosa and his advisors have now realized that Starlink’s data services could help bring greater security, particularly to rural areas of the country.

In crime statistics for the first three months of this year released on Friday, which critics say are not verified independently, the Police Minister claimed five of the six people killed on farms were Black, and one was White. 

President Donald Trump, right, meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (AP/Evan Vucci)

However, with little effective police protection in the cities, and even less in the rural areas, a Black farmer’s comment sums up the worries of many South Africans today. Standing at the funeral of a rural White farmer, he said to an Institute of Race Relations representative “Although he’s White, we don’t look at the color. We are doing the same thing. Next time it’s going to be me.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the South African government for comment, but they did not respond.