Fact control Donald Trump’s Oval Office Confrontation with Cyril Ramaphosa

Donald Trump confronted President Cyril Ramaphosa during a tense exchange in the White House on Wednesday, with a series of disputed claims about the murders of white farmers in South Africa.

The meeting – initially warm and light -hearted – changed quickly when Trump asked his staff to play a video with opposition South African politicians calling for violence against white farmers.

Trump also played images with rows of crosses, of which he claimed it was a funeral location for murdered white farmers, and presented Ramaphosa copies of articles that he said was the widespread brutality against the white minority of South Africa.

Proposals of the Trump government have long reinforced claims of violence against the white minority, in particular Elon Musk and former Fox News -Guestheer Tucker Carlson, who led segments on the assumed genocide during the president’s first term. Some of these claims are demonstrably untrue.

The images played by Trump in the Oval Office showed rows of white crosses that extend in the distance along a rural road. Trump claimed: “These are cemeteries here. Cemeteries. More than a thousand white farmers.”

However, the crosses do not mark Graves. The video is from a protest against the murder of white agricultural couple Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were lured in an ambush and shot in their building in 2020. The clip was shared on YouTube on September 6, the day after the protests.

“It is not a cemetery, but it was a memorial,” Rob Hatson, one of the organizers of the event, said the BBC. He said the crosses were founded as a “temporary monument” for the couple.

Hatson said the crosses have since been removed.

BBC Verify has extracted the images to an area in the province of Kwazulu-Natal, near the city of Newcastle. Google Street View images recorded in May 2023 – almost three years after the images appeared online for the first time – shows that the crosses were no longer.

In the meeting, Trump said: “Many people are very worried about South Africa … We have many people who feel they are being persecuted, and they come to the US, so we take many locations when we think there is persecution or genocide.”

He previously made claims about “white genocide” several times and seemed to refer to it.

During a press conference earlier this month, he said: “It is a genocide that takes place” that refers to murder of white farmers in South Africa.

The country has one of the highest murder figures in the world. According to figures from the South African Police Service (SAPS), there were 26,232 murders last year.

Of these, 44 murders were on people within the agricultural community and there were eight from farmers.

These figures are not split by race into a public statistics that we have found – but they clearly provide no evidence of the claims of “white genocide” that is repeatedly made by Trump.

In February a South African judge the idea of ​​a genocide rejected As “clearly imagined” and “not real”.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU), which represents farmers, collects figures that provide insight into the racial identity of the victims. The Tau relies on media reports, messages on social media and reports from their members.

Their figures for last year show that 23 white people were killed at farm attacks and nine black people. So far, Tau has taken up three white people and four black people this year who were killed on South African farms.

During the tense meeting, Trump played images of political rallies in which participants sang “Kill the Boer” – a controversial anti -apartige song that critics say that violence against white farmers is calling.

South African courts had categorized the song as hateful language, but recent judgments ruled that it can be legally sung with rallies, because judges say it makes a political point and does not immediately call violence.

Trump said those who lead singing were “civil servants” and “people who were in office”.

One of the men who led the rally was Julius Malema, who previously led the youth wing of the reigning ANC. In 2012 he left the party and never held an official government position. He now leads a party called the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) that won 9.5% in last year’s elections and opposes the new multi-party coalition.

Ramaphosa responded to Trump’s allegations and emphasized that the EFF is “a small minority party” and said that “our government policy is entirely to what he said”.

Another man in the video that can be heard by singing the text “Shoot the Boer” during another rally is former President Jacob Zuma, who left his office in 2018. The video is from 2012 when he was president. Shortly thereafter, the ANC promised to stop singing the song.

Zuma then left the ANC and now leads the Umkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party opposition, which won more than 14% in last year’s elections.

During the meeting, Trump stopped a series of articles that he claimed showed the evidence of murders on white farmers in South Africa.

There was an image clearly visible while Trump said: “Look, here are cemeteries everywhere. These are all white farmers who are buried.”

But the image does not come from South Africa – it is actually a report on women who are killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The French news agency (AFP) initially pointed to the image, and BBC verified a search and confirmed it as being a clip of Reuters News Agency, filmed in the city of Goma of Dr. Congo in February.