President Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, there is “white genocide” in South Africa. Once more, he has pulled a rotten apple out of his barrel to embellish his own sense of superiority and power.
There is no “white genocide” in South Africa; there’s just a white man in the White House pulling the strings to his own personal advantage.
First a bit of context. Tell me a lie and I will believe you. Tell me two lies and I may give you the benefit of the doubt. Tell me three lies and I will label you a liar. Tell 32,000 lies and I will doubt every claim you make. Call this the “believability rating.”
In that light, I venture there is no white genocide in South Africa because the 2020 election was not stolen, Trump’s conviction was not a sham, the immigrants in Springfield are not eating pets, immigrants are not “poisoning the blood,” and all immigrants are not criminals. Outside of MAGA, Trump’s believability rating is underwater.
Oval Office meeting
Trump went as far as to claim there is an ongoing “genocide” against white farmers in South Africa during a tense meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office this week.
Just like what happened with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, it was an ambush. Trump enjoys embarrassing leaders from other nations as he sits in his gold-gilded presidential office.
The entire spectacle was a setup. Trump’s excessive rhetoric of white identity, privilege and belonging cover his administration like a thick white fog. While Trump’s deception should be easily exposed, one never ceases to be amazed at MAGA complicity and believability in their great white hope. We are tempted to agree with Ta Nehisi Coates that Trump’s only ideology is white supremacy.
“We are tempted to agree with Ta Nehisi Coates that Trump’s only ideology is white supremacy.”
The entire spectacle came across like a rerun from a 1950s television show. Trump makes claims opposite of the facts and truth. For example, he routinely claims crime rates are rising when they are falling. He claims the price of gas is falling when it is not. He continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen — and he threatens anyone who doesn’t go along with his lie.
Trump continuously attempts to portray undocumented immigrants as criminals even though the chance that an American will die at the hands of an illegal immigrant is about one in 3.6 million. The chance of being murdered by an undocumented migrant is one in 10.9 million. Yet Trump has managed to convince millions of Americans immigrants are an imminent threat to their personal safety. In his mind, there are more immigrants wielding semi-automatic guns than farm tools.
Adding fuel to the imagined “white genocide,” when Trump makes a false claim, his advisers and spokespeople reiterate the claim, and when confronted with contrary evidence, they defend the misinformation and repeat it again with emphasis.
Elon Musk listens as reporters ask U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions during a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Elon Musk, born in South Africa, is an example of repeating Trump’s lie. Musk, a South African native and a top adviser to Trump, was present for Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House. What an overdrawn, obvious plant for Trump’s planned attack on the president of South Africa. Musk, as a faithful Trump stooge, voiced Trump’s allegations that white South Africans are fleeing the country due to “violence and racist laws.”
The White House attempted to back up Trump’s false claim of “white genocide” by releasing a statement that Fox News, Breitbart and the BBC had stories of “white genocide” in South Africa. The surprise here is BBC. I read articles on BBC about “white genocide” in South Africa and found no evidence that BBC is backing Trump’s claim.
The danger of Trump’s misinformation increases because his staff and MAGA crowd, like backup singers in a country band, repeat Trump’s false accusations as if they were true. Until we see Trump as a maniacal puppet master pulling strings from every direction, we never will know we are witnessing a puppet show.
A diversionary tactic
I rule out Trump’s claim of “white genocide” on other levels as well.
Lurking in the background of the “white genocide” claim is Trump’s misdirection as he pulls attention away from his racist innuendo (anti-DEI), his denial of global warming, his scapegoating of immigrants as the greatest threat to America, his exploitation of terrorism as a way of expanding his own power, his cruel reductions in the social safety net, and his relentless attacks on public education.
Trump’s claim of “white genocide” works its dark magic with one of his favorite tropes — white victimization. This enables him to reinforce his message to MAGA. White people are persecuted, mistreated and abused. Trump is drumming up additional piles of sheer fear. He is deliberately scaring white Americans into the unbelievable notion that when whites are a minority, they will be treated even worse than they treated African Americans.
No one else is making the claim of “white genocide.” Ramaphosa, major political parties in South Africa and a South African judge, however, have denied the existence of a white genocide in the country. In February 2025, a South African court ruled that claims of white genocide were unfounded, calling them “not real” and “clearly imagined.”
No one would have better understood Trump’s political clownery than Bishop Tutu. He said, “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.” The bishop knew a “hustle” from a con man when he saw it.
If the charge of “white genocide” were true, we would be witnessing a total reversal of history. The history of “white people” in South Africa is a blot on the history of whites. Afrikaners are descended mainly from Western Europeans who settled on the southern tip of Africa during the middle of the 17th century. They were Dutch (34.8%), German (33.7%), and French (13.2%) settlers who made up 80% of the white population migrating to South Africa.
Their history includes forcing Blacks to leave their land, introducing apartheid, expanding racial segregation to egregious levels, passing racist laws that banned interracial marriages, reserving jobs for white people, and forcing Blacks to live in restricted areas. They also denied Blacks the opportunity for a decent education.
Afrikaner leader Henrick Verwoerd remarked in the 1950s that “Blacks should never be shown the greener pastures of education. They should know their station in life is to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
The definition of ‘genocide’
The definition of genocide makes clear how far from the truth Trump has wandered with his charge.
By definition, “genocide” is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion or race. In South Africa, the facts negate the charge.
The murder rate in South Africa, even if all those murdered were white farmers, would fall astronomically short of meeting the definition of genocide. In 2023, the murder rate in South Africa was 4.5 per 100,000. This doesn’t put South Africa in the top 10 of the countries with the most murders per capita.
Trump’s charge is a naked emotional attempt to drum up support for his racist policy of admitting white South Africans to the U.S. while deporting Black and brown immigrants.
Trump never tires of his same old emotional, fearmongering strategies. He keeps using political alienation, demagoguery, spectacle and misinformation to undergird his own questionable policies. He keeps taking advantage of a pre-existing culture of fear and hatred. He employs projection to promote bigotry in pursuit of his own power.
This was not about South Africa, “white genocide” or murder. It’s about Trump’s ham-handed “reality television-like” attempt to orchestrate even more control over MAGA through fear and lies.
Remember when Trump says, “white genocide,” he is really saying, “It’s about white supremacy.”
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