Wedaeli Chibelushi & Nomsa Maseko
BBC News, London & Johannesburg
South Africa’s latest crime statistics debunk claims that a genocide is being committed against white people, the country’s police minister has said.
The widely discredited allegation was amplified by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, in an extraordinary meeting with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa.
Trump told Ramaphosa that white farmers in South Africa were being killed and “persecuted”.
On Friday, South African Police Minister Senzo Mchunu said that between January and March, five out of the six people killed on farms were black and one was white.
The white victim lived on a farm, while the black people who were killed comprised two farm owners, two employees and one manager.
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Mchunu said that in the previous quarter, from October to December 2024, 12 murders on farms were recorded. One of the 12 – a farm owner – was white.
It is the first time that South Africa’s crime statistics have been broken down by race, but Mchunu said he had done so as a result of the recent genocide claims.
“The history of farm murders in the country has always been distorted and reported in an unbalanced way,” he said.
In February, a South African judge dismissed the idea of a genocide as “clearly imagined” and “not real”, when ruling in an inheritance case involving a wealthy benefactor’s donation to a white supremacist group.
Claims of genocide in South Africa have been circulating for years, catching the attention of right-wing groups in the US.
Ramaphosa visited the White House on Wednesday in an attempt to reset the countries’ relations after Trump granted asylum to nearly 60 Afrikaners – descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who arrived in the 17th Century – saying they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.
During the meeting, which was broadcast live, Trump ambushed Ramaphosa with videos and images intended to support his claim of a white genocide.
The BBC found that this “evidence” contained numerous falsehoods.
“We have respect for the US as a country, we have respect for the people in that country and for President Trump, but we have no respect for the genocide story. It is totally unfounded and unsubstantiated,” Mchunu said on Friday.
A spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office also condemned Trump’s comments.
“These are very serious issues. One should not use this word [genocide] casually without deep knowledge of what this means. Looking at the history of South Africa, it is wholly inappropriate,” Ravina Shamdasani is quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and Mchunu acknowledged that crime was a huge problem.
However, he added that all sections of society were affected.
The minister also rejected allegations, repeated by Trump, that government was expropriating land held by white farmers.
Earlier this year, Ramaphosa signed a controversial law which allowed the government to seize privately-owned land without compensation in some circumstances. The South African government says no land has been seized yet under the act.
The law follows years of calls for land reform in South Africa, where the white minority possess the vast majority of privately held land and wealth in the country, more than 30 years since the racist system of apartheid ended.
Relations between South Africa and the US have slumped since Trump took office in January. As well as offering asylum to Afrikaners, the US leader has cut aid to South Africa and expelled its ambassador.
