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.
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.
