A political clash has erupted between South Africa and the United States after President Donald Trump showed a controversial video during a recent White House meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The footage, which featured rows of white crosses along a rural road, was presented by Trump as evidence of mass killings of white farmers. South Africa’s Police Minister Senzo Mchunu says that interpretation is false.
The dispute began during Trump and Ramaphosa’s meeting on Wednesday. As part of their conversation, a video was shown in the Oval Office. Trump described it as proof of burial sites for over a thousand white farmers, claiming the image reflected racial persecution and even genocide. According to Trump, the vehicles seen in the footage were people gathering “to pay love on a Sunday morning.”
Mchunu responded strongly on Friday, explaining that the crosses were not graves at all. They were temporary symbols placed during a 2020 protest near Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal province. The demonstration was part of a funeral procession for a white couple who were murdered during a robbery on their farm. Mchunu said the event was meant to draw attention to violence against all farmers—both Black and white—and the crosses were removed afterward.
Those who took part in the event, including the couple’s son and former member of Parliament Lourens Bosman, backed up Mchunu’s account. Bosman said the protest honored victims of farm violence across South Africa, not only white individuals. He clarified that the symbolic crosses represented farmers and farmworkers of all races who had lost their lives over more than two decades.
In recent months, Trump has repeated claims that white farmers in South Africa are being targeted in a widespread and racially motivated campaign. He has described the situation as genocide. South African officials reject this, saying the claims are based on misinformation and ignore the full picture of crime in the country.
Violent crime is a major concern in South Africa, but farm-related murders are rare in comparison to the national total. From January to March of this year, there were more than 5,700 homicides in South Africa. Only six took place on farms, and just one of those victims was white, according to Mchunu.
Although the South African government typically does not track crime by race, Mchunu said they had broken down the farm killings in response to Trump’s genocide narrative. He called the U.S. president’s interpretation of the video deeply misleading and said it was used to support a false storyline.
Trump’s administration defended showing the video. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the crosses symbolized people who had been “racially persecuted by their government.” But Mchunu firmly denied this, saying the scene was twisted into something it was not.
South Africa’s population is roughly 62 million, with white citizens making up about 7%. Many of the country’s commercial farms are still owned by white South Africans, and tensions around land and wealth remain part of the national conversation. Still, officials emphasize that farm attacks affect both white and Black farmers, and the government has publicly condemned violence in all cases.
President Ramaphosa had requested this week’s meeting with Trump, aiming to correct the U.S. leader’s understanding of South Africa and rebuild diplomatic trust. However, the fallout from the video suggests that tensions remain, especially as the issue spreads across social media and fuels ongoing debates around race, crime, and international politics.