Fox News video screengrab
President Donald Trump delivered a sharp rebuke to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during an Oval Office meeting Wednesday, accusing the South African government of enabling racially motivated violence and land confiscation targeting white Afrikaner farmers.
“People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety,” said Trump. “Their land is being confiscated and in many cases they’re being killed.”
To underscore his point, Trump dimmed the lights and played a video montage featuring anti-white rhetoric from South African political rallies. The footage included politicians singing about “killing farmers” and crowds chanting for the death of white men.
“You must never be scared to kill,” one speaker said. “A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing.”
Trump then showed footage of a memorial site marked with white crosses, each one representing a murdered farmer. “Over a thousand white farmers,” Trump said, pointing at the screen.
Ramaphosa dismissed the accusations, insisting his administration opposes all forms of violence. “We are completely opposed to that,” he responded.
The tense exchange comes just days after the US granted refugee status to 59 white Afrikaners fleeing South Africa.
In a CBS interview Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “All evidence [indicates] the farmers in South Africa are being treated brutally.”
Afrikaner farmers, a predominantly Dutch-descended white ethnic group, have reported escalating threats and attacks in recent months.
In early March, Trump announced an expedited path to citizenship for South African farmers, citing their “terrible mistreatment” under the country’s policies. The move builds on a February executive order slashing federal aid to South Africa over land seizure laws, which allow the government to confiscate farmland without compensation.
A White House fact sheet described the policy as blatant discrimination “against ethnic minority descendants of settler groups,” calling it an abuse of post-apartheid reparations.
As CatholicVote previously reported, Afrikaner author and activist Ernst Roets warned in early March that the government’s actions are “preceded by speech about how white people are criminals and should be treated like criminals — how everything they have is illegitimate and stolen — in which people are encouraged to go and invade their farms.”
