South African minister refutes Trump’s ‘white genocide’ declare

South African Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has strongly dismissed claims by US President Donald Trump that a video shown during a White House meeting depicted mass burial sites of over 1,000 white farmers. Mchunu clarified that the video, that includes a rural highway lined with white crosses, was misleadingly offered by Trump to assist a false narrative of a “genocide” in opposition to white farmers in South Africa.

The video was proven throughout a gathering between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa within the Oval Office of the White House.

Trump claimed the crosses marked graves and indicated a mass killing of white farmers, calling the scene “very bad.”

“These are burial sites, right here. Burial sites, over a thousand, of white farmers, and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning,” Trump was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

However, Mchunu stated the crosses have been a part of a short lived memorial erected in 2020 throughout a funeral procession for a white couple killed in a theft. They have been symbolic, not precise grave markers, and have been eliminated following the occasion.

The protest, held close to Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal province, was meant to honor each Black and white farmers who had been killed over many years, to not point out mass graves.

Mchunu accused Trump of distorting information to gasoline a discredited “genocide” narrative, which alleges that white farmers are being systematically murdered and dispossessed in South Africa, a declare broadly debunked by South African authorities and fact-checkers.

Despite white South Africans making up simply 7% of the inhabitants, they nonetheless maintain a lot of the nation’s agricultural wealth, a legacy of apartheid. Nonetheless, each white and Black farmers are victims of crime, and the federal government has persistently condemned violence in opposition to all residents.

Trump’s administration not too long ago reduce US monetary assist to South Africa, accusing the federal government of mistreating white landowners and inspiring land seizures, allegations the South African authorities has firmly rejected.

President Ramaphosa sought the assembly with Trump to appropriate misinformation and enhance strained diplomatic ties. South African officers say Trump’s statements are based mostly on misinformation and solely serve to break worldwide relations and unfold racial worry.

(With inputs from Associated Press)

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