 "President Donald Trump confronts South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House with printouts of White people being allegedly attacked in South Africa. AP")
In a tense and highly unusual Oval Office encounter on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump presented false and misleading information to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, claiming white farmers in South Africa were being killed.
The images and videos Trump cited as proof have been proven to be fake or taken out of context, marking what is likely the first time fake news was presented at such a high level of diplomacy inside the Oval Office.
Trump held up a printed article with a photo, saying, “These are all white farmers that are being buried.”
However, the picture in question was not taken in South Africa but was a screengrab from a February Reuters video showing humanitarian workers handling body bags in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, after clashes involving M23 rebels.
Reuters has confirmed the footage was unrelated to South Africa.
Later in the meeting, Trump played a video that purportedly showed the graves of white farmers — more than a thousand marked by white crosses. But the footage, filmed near Newcastle and Normandien in South Africa, showed a temporary memorial erected by activist Rob Hoatson to raise awareness about rural crime, not a burial site.
“It was a memorial. It was not a permanent one,” BBC quoted Hoatson as saying.
Trump used the video to justify his proposal of offering “refuge” to white South African farmers, invoking a longstanding conspiracy theory that white people in South Africa are victims of state-backed genocide — a claim consistently refuted by South African officials and independent researchers.
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More ShortsThe video also featured controversial clips of Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), wearing his signature red beret and chanting inflammatory slogans including “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer.”
Trump falsely claimed Malema was a government official, implying that his rhetoric reflected official policy. In reality, Malema is an opposition figure whose party received just 9.5% of the vote in the last election.
President Ramaphosa and members of his delegation, including Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen of the Democratic Alliance, rejected Trump’s claims. Steenhuisen said that he joined Ramaphosa’s multiparty coalition “precisely to keep these people out of power.”
Ramaphosa visited Washington to improve relations with the U.S. after months of criticism from Trump over South Africa’s land policies and supposed mistreatment of white citizens. The South African government says those claims are false and politically motivated.
While fake news and disinformation have long been fixtures in the Trump era, this Oval Office incident marks a rare and alarming instance of false narratives being presented directly to a foreign head of state as fact.
With inputs from agencies