The US President Donald Trump, during a meeting with South African (RSA) President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, showed a news report that purportedly showed mass killings of white South Africans. It turned out to be a screenshot of a Reuters video filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Reuters fact-checked and stated that the screenshot Trump shared showed aid workers burying bodies in the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“It’s all white farmers who are being buried,” Trump said at the time.
The blog post that Trump showed screenshots of to the South African president at the White House meeting was from the conservative online magazine American Thinker. It discussed conflicts and racial tensions in South Africa and Congo. The blog post did not include a caption for the photo, but it did say it was a screenshot from YouTube with a link to a video report on Congo, which showed that the video was produced by Reuters.
"In front of the whole world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in the DR Congo, to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by black people," commented the author of the image Al Katanti.
Reuters, after fact-checking, concluded that Trump repeatedly made false statements and distorted some facts in a conversation with President Cyril Ramaphosa. The latter tried to deny these statements, but Trump constantly interrupted him and repeated his words. The American leader told the team to show a video that consisted mainly of old excerpts of provocative speeches by South African politicians that have long been circulating on social media.
Trump also flipped through hard copies of articles that he said detailed the killings of white South Africans, repeating the words "death, death, death, horrible death".
What preceded
During his first term, Donald Trump promised to investigate unproven mass killings of white farmers in South Africa and alleged violent land grabs. Pretoria said at the time that Trump was misinformed. It is not known whether his administration has addressed the issue.
In January 2025, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law that makes it easier for the state to expropriate land for public purposes. This is intended to address racial inequality in land ownership, a problem that has persisted since the fall of apartheid in 1994.
In February, Trump reported that he was pausing funding for South Africa due to the expropriation law.
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