During a meeting at the White House on Wednesday, President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with accusations that genocide is currently being committed against white farmers in the country.
To emphasize the seriousness of the situation, Trump ordered the lights in the Oval Office to be dimmed and showed a five-minute film detailing how South African politicians are inciting murder and systematic violence against the country’s white minority.
Trump said he had not yet “made up his mind” whether it was appropriate to use the term “genocide” in this context, but stated that “thousands” of white South Africans had so far sought refugee status in the US and that he wanted to “save lives”.
The film included clips in which Julius Malema, leader of the left-wing populist party Economic Freedom Fighters, can be clearly heard calling for murder and violence.
– Revolution demands at some point there must be killing, the notorious politician claims in the film.
Several sequences showed Malema dancing in front of tens of thousands of spectators while he and his comrades chanted “kill the Boer, the farmer!” and declared that “we are cutting the throat of whiteness!”
HOLY CRAP! President Trump just DIRECTLY confronted the President of South Africa with videos of his government calling for WHITE GENOCIDE
“Turn the lights down and roll the video!”
“These are burial sites — crosses marking murdered White farmers”
The President of SA looks… pic.twitter.com/WHr5zxDVO3
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 21, 2025
“They’ll kill you if you’re white”
In another clip, former president Jacob Zuma (2009–2018) was seen singing a well-known black protest song that includes the same chorus with “kill the Boers”. According to critics, this song has contributed to increased tensions and more attacks on white farmers. The film also showed roadside memorials dedicated to what were said to be dozens of murdered white farmers.
Trump also criticized a new South African law that allows the South African state to confiscate unused land – land that is often owned by the white minority. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and is now a close advisor to Trump, was also present at the meeting and listened as the president recounted what an acquaintance had told him:
– They take your land and they kill you if you’re white.
– I will say, apartheid, terrible. That was the biggest story – that was reported all the time. This is sort of the opposite of apartheid. What’s happening now is never reported, the president continued, wondering why Malema was not imprisoned when he called for genocide in front of television cameras and tens of thousands of spectators.
“Not government policy”
Ramaphosa remained very calm during the hour-long conversation held before the assembled press and firmly denied that Malema’s calls for genocide reflect the South African government’s position:
– What you saw, the speeches that were being made, one that is not government policy. Our government policy is completely, completely against what (Malema) was saying, he asserted.
Vi vet vad massmedia hade kallat det här om det hade varit vita sydafrikaner som hade skanderat detta om svarta.pic.twitter.com/Q43H3kAzMV
— Pontus Persson (@PontusPersson5) May 22, 2025
In an attempt to appease the Trump administration, Ramaphosa chose to highlight the South African golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, who are popular in the US and accompanied him on the trip, and to thank Trump for the US’s delivery of ventilators during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020.
South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture Jan Steenhuisen, who is himself white, also attended the conference and argued that the security situation in rural areas is indeed very poor. However, he did not want to call it genocide or even suggest that white farmers were particularly vulnerable.
– It requires a lot of effort to get on top of it. It’s going to require more policing resources, it’s gonna require a different strategy to be able to deal with it. But certainly, the majority of South Africa’s commercial and smallholder farmers really do want to stay in South Africa and make it work, he claimed.
Steenhuisen claimed that his party, the liberal Democratic Alliance, which won 21 percent of the vote in the last election, entered into a coalition with Ramaphosa’s ANC (approximately 40 percent of the vote) precisely to keep people like Malema out of power.
Malema’s EFF and Zuma’s MK, which are significantly more openly hostile and disapproving of the white minority than Ramaphosa’s ANC, together have around 25 percent of the vote.
A “violent country”
Zingiswa Losi, president of the country’s largest trade union, COSATU, had also been flown in and tried to convince Trump that South Africa is a “violent country” – and that people are killed regardless of their ethnic background.
– If you go into the rural areas where the black majority are, you will see women, elderly, being raped, being killed, being murdered. The problem in South Africa, it is not necessarily about race, but it is about crime, she claimed.
Ramaphosa himself could not deny that senseless violence and murder continue to be part of everyday life in South Africa – but he claims that this is due to “inequality and unemployment” – and that the problems can be solved by improving South Africa’s economy.
– Our main, main, real reason for being here is to foster trade and investment, so that we are able to grow our economy, with your support, and so that we are also able to address all these societal problems.
When Ramaphosa left the White House after three hours, he told reporters that the meeting “went very well”.
Mocked white refugees
However, not everyone is impressed by the South African leader’s defense, and several have pointed out how he recently mocked white South Africans who fled to the US to escape persecution and oppression.
GENOCIDE: South African President Ramaphosa insists that the whites facing genocide do so as men and not flee to America like cowards. White farmers must pay for the sins of their ancestors with their lives. pic.twitter.com/fYAMlEfpVX
— @amuse (@amuse) May 19, 2025
In a speech, he claimed before a laughing audience that Afrikaners are fleeing for “fictitious reasons” – and asserted that South Africa is “united in diversity”.
– None of us should ever feel that they have lost courage and now become cowards and want to run, the president said, mocking the white refugees.
Earlier this year, The Nordic Times highlighted the Afrikaners’ uncertain future and their centuries-long history in the country in a lengthy cultural article.
