Trump falsely says South Africans fleeing ‘white genocide’ to Australia in chaotic meeting with Ramaphosa
Donald Trump falsely claimed Australia was being “inundated” by fleeing South Africans as he essentially accused president Cyril Ramaphosa of overseeing a “white genocide” in his country.
During a chaotic White House meeting with the visiting African leader on Wednesday, Mr Trump dimmed Oval Office lights to show videos and tabloid news articles to back up his claim of “white genocide” in South Africa.
Mr Trump, not once but twice, claimed that many white farmers fleeing a campaign of murder and dispossession in South Africa were seeking refuge in Australia.
“You’re taking people’s land and those people in many cases are being executed,” the US president said during his meeting with Mr Ramaphosa. “They are being executed. And they happen to be white, and most of them happen to be farmers. We have thousands of people who want to come into our country. They are also going to Australia, in smaller numbers.”
“You take a look at Australia,” he repeated, “they’re being inundated and we’re being inundated with people that want to get out and their farm is valueless.”
Mr Trump’s claim was unsubstantiated. South Africa does not rank among the top 10 countries of origin for humanitarian entrants to Australia. That list is made up largely of nations affected by conflict and persecution such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Myanmar.
People born in South Africa form only the seventh-largest migrant community in Australia, accounting for 2.6 per cent of the country’s foreign-born population, according to the Department of Home Affairs.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but the overwhelming majority of the victims are Black. The claim of white South African farmers facing a genocide has been pushed by a number of white nationalist groups in the US. Mr Trump has supported the claim that thousands of Afrikaners, a white minority primarily descended from Dutch settlers who governed South Africa during the apartheid era, have been slain in race-based land confiscations.
Mr Trump previously cut all American aid to South Africa and expedited the arrival of dozens of white farmers to the US as refugees.
In 2018, Australia’s then home minister Peter Dutton sparked international controversy by suggesting that white South African farmers faced “persecution” and deserved “special attention” under his country’s humanitarian visa programme.
Although his government clarified that there would be no special treatment for white South Africans, Mr Dutton’s statement was widely criticised at home and abroad for echoing far-right rhetoric and advocating racial bias in immigration policy.
South Africa, which endured centuries of brutal discrimination against black people during colonialism and apartheid before becoming a democracy in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, rejects allegations of white genocide.
A new land reform law, aimed at redressing the injustices of apartheid, allows for expropriation without compensation when in the public interest, for example if the land is lying fallow.
No such expropriation has taken place yet, however, and any order under the new law can be challenged in court.
South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, with 44 linked to farming communities. Eight of those victims were farmers. Mr Ramaphosa, sitting in a chair next to Mr Trump and remaining poised, pushed back against his claims.
“If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here,” Mr Ramaphosa said, referring to golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen and billionaire Johann Rupert, all white, who were present in the room.
Mr Ramaphosa said there was crime in South Africa, and the majority of victims were Black. Mr Trump cut him off and said: “The farmers are not Black.”
Mr Ramaphosa responded: “These are concerns we are willing to talk to you about.”
