During his visit to the White House, US President Donald Trump confronted South Africa's head of state Cyril Ramaphosa with claims that white farmers are being mass murdered in South Africa.

The narrative that white population groups are being systematically and deliberately killed is not supported by facts and official statistics. It has been circulating in right-wing circles for years and is linked to the racist conspiracy myth of the "Great Replacement."

Claim: "These are the -- these are burial sites right here," Trump said (White House videominute 24:25), while describing a footage during a meeting with Ramaphosa at the White House on May 21.

"Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers," added Trump.

DW Fact check: False

Trump's claim was already circulating on social media before Ramaphosa's state visit to the US. On May 12, a user on X explained that every cross stands for a murdered white farmer in South Africa. The video posthas been viewed almost 55 million times at the time of publishing.

A reverse image search shows that the footage used by Trump with the white crosses on the side of the road was already shared on social media in 2020 and 2023. These are not, as Trump claims, the gravesites of more than a thousand murdered farmers.

'Ramaphosa, how many more must die?'

Instead, the scenes show a protest near the South African city of Newcastle on September 5, 2020. The protest was triggered by the murder of married couple Glen and Vida Rafferty on their farm in August 2020.

Among others, the South African newspaper Newcastle Advertiser reportedon the incident:

"Trucks, tractors, trucks, bakkies, vans, sedans, scooters, motorcycles, helicopters and airplanes – vehicles of almost every description formed part of the Move ONE Million group’s procession deep into Normandien today (September 5)." [...]

"Just after the Horn River bridge, hundreds of symbolic wooden crosses had been erected along the route by volunteers. Almost halfway to Hanover, the farm where Glen and Vida Rafferty were murdered, an enormous banner was strung above the road: ‘President Ramaphosa, how many more must die???’"

In another passage of the video used by Trump, the South African politician Julius Malema is shown proclaiming the slogan “Kill the boer, kill the farmer”.

The footage was taken at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, where the left-wing South African party “Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)” celebrated its tenth anniversaryin August 2023. Media outlets like public broadcaster SABC News reportedon the event.

Dangerous hate speech

Julius Malema was a member of the South African ruling party African National Congress ANC before the EEF was founded and was expelled from the party in 2012.

The song is an old declaration of war from the apartheid era and has been classified as hate speech in South Africa on several occasions.

South Africa's President Ramaphosa distancedhimself from the aforementioned statements immediately after the video screening. The President said those speeches are not his government policy. 

South African farmer Theo de Jaeger, head of the Southern African Agri Initiative, also told DW that there is no genocide of white farmers in South Africa (see video above).

After Trump recently offered white farmers asylumin the US, he wrote a public letter to the US President, feeling compelled to set the record straight.

"We were scared that he might misunderstand what it's all about. I sent him that letter that the challenges we have are not only challenges for white farmers, there are even bigger challenges for black farmers," he told DW.

Land distribution in South Africa is still extremely unequal more than 30 years after the end of apartheid.

According to a 2017 report by the South African government, white people own around 72% of agricultural land, while black South Africans only own around 4% of individually registered farms.

White South Africans make up only 7.8%of the total South African population.

This article was originally written in German.

This article is part of a cooperation with the fact check teams of the public broadcasters ARD-Faktenfinder, BR24 #Faktenfuchs and DW Faktencheck.