South Africa’s Police Minister says Trump ’twisted’ details to push genocide claims

U.S. President Donald Trump argues with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa within the Oval Office of the White House, on May 21, 2025
| Photo Credit: AP

South Africa’s high legislation enforcement official mentioned on Friday (May 23, 2025) that U.S. President Donald Trump wrongly claimed {that a} video he showed in the Oval Office was of burial websites for greater than 1,000 white farmers and he “twisted” the details to push a false narrative about mass killings of white folks in his nation.

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu was speaking a few video clip that was performed throughout the assembly between Mr. Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on the White House on Wednesday (May 21, 2025) that confirmed an aerial view of a rural street with strains of white crosses erected on both facet.

“Now this is very bad,” Mr. Trump mentioned as he referred to the clip that was a part of an extended video that was performed within the assembly. “These are burial websites, proper right here. Burial websites, over a thousand, of white farmers, and people automobiles are lined as much as pay love on a Sunday morning.”

Mr. Mchunu mentioned the crosses didn’t mark graves or burial websites, however have been a brief memorial put up in 2020 to protest the killings of all farmers throughout South Africa. They have been put up throughout a funeral procession for a white couple who have been killed in a theft on their farm, Mr. Mchunu mentioned.

A son of the couple who have been killed and a area people member who took half within the procession additionally mentioned the crosses don’t characterize burial websites and have been taken down after the protest.

South Africa struggles with extraordinarily excessive ranges of violent crime, though farm killings make up a small share of the nation’s total homicides. Both white and Black farmers are attacked, and typically killed, and the federal government has condemned the violence in opposition to each teams.

Whites make up round 7% of South Africa’s 62 million folks however typically nonetheless have a a lot better way of life than the Black majority greater than 30 years after the top of the apartheid system of racial segregation. Whites make up the vast majority of the nation’s wealthier industrial farmers.

Mr. Mchunu mentioned Mr. Trump’s false claims that the crosses represented greater than 1,000 burial websites was a part of his “genocide story” — referring to the U.S. president’s baseless allegations in latest weeks that there’s a widespread marketing campaign in South Africa to kill white farmers and take their land that he has mentioned quantities to a genocide.

“They are not graves. They don’t represent graves,” Mr. Mchunu mentioned concerning the video that has turn out to be distinguished on social media because it was proven within the White House. “And it was unfortunate that those facts got twisted to fit a false narrative about crime in South Africa.”

“We have respect for the president of the United States,” Mr. Mchunu added. “But we have no respect for his genocide story whatsoever.”

The White House, when requested about Mr. Mchunu’s remarks, pointed again to press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s feedback a day earlier at her briefing, when she mentioned that “the video confirmed crosses that characterize the lifeless our bodies of people that have been racially persecuted by their authorities.”

Of the greater than 5,700 homicides in South Africa from January by way of March, six occurred on farms and, of these, one sufferer was white, mentioned Mchunu. “In principle, we do not categorise people by race, but in the context of claims of genocide of white people, we need to unpack the killings in this category,” he mentioned.