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.
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