Source: Johann Rupert

Rupert linked many farm murders to unemployment and illegal immigration, saying: “We have a serious problem with illegal aliens, who stream across the border, and if you really look at our statistics, a lot of these murders… Firstly, it's unemployment and illegal aliens”. 

South Africa has extremely high unemployment levels. While various factors are implicated, some research has linked higher murder rates with unemployment, inequality and other economic drivers.

Existing research points to the economic motive of robbery in most farm murders – though more recent data is needed.

While there is a common belief that immigrants are behind much of the crime in South Africa, the police told Africa Check that they don’t have data on this. Crime experts have said there is no evidence that immigrants contribute disproportionately to crime levels.   

For farm attacks and murders specifically, there is limited data. In a September 2023 report covering data from 2019 to 2022, AfriForum reported arrest and conviction rates of perpetrators. 

The vast majority of suspects arrested were reported to be South African for both farm attacks without murder (78%) and where murders were committed (86%). Nationality was not known in 2% and 1% of cases, respectively. 

While this data is incomplete, as it only reflects perpetrators who are recorded as apprehended, and their immigration status is not known, this appears to contradict Rupert’s claim.

Source: Donald Trump

Later in the meeting, Trump claimed that there were no consequences for farm murder, saying “when they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.”

Setting aside the unfounded claims of “tak[ing] the land”, murders of white farmers in South Africa are often high-profile crimes that are reported on extensively in the media, and court cases are publicly accessible online. Here are a few examples:

• In 2017, an 18-year old was sentenced for murder, robbery and housebreaking on a farm in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.
• That same year a man was given a life sentence and 68 years imprisonment for murdering a farmer and injuring his wife.
• In 2020 two men received life sentences for killing a farmer couple in Normandien, KwaZulu-Natal, while a third got 60 years.
• Also in 2020, three people were sentenced for murder and robbery after killing a farmer and two family members.
• In another case, two perpetrators were handed multiple life sentences for killing a farm manager and relatives.

While farm murder data is imperfect, there is clear evidence that perpetrators do face legal consequences.  

AfriForum, using police data, tracked the legal proceedings around farm murder cases from 2019 to 2022. It does not specifically refer to white victims. Their report said of the arrests made for 75 cases, 24 cases ended in a guilty verdict, giving a conviction rate of 32%. While the group said that this is low, low conviction rates are common for violent crime in South Africa. 

More to the point, this data directly contradicts Trump’s claim that “nothing happens” to those who commit these crimes.

The footage shown by Trump’s team has circulated online since at least 2020, and was recently reshared by Elon Musk. 

It shows an aerial view of vehicles on a road lined with white crosses. Trump claimed the crosses were "burial sites" of "over a thousand" white farmers and that vehicles  had stopped to mourn murdered relatives. When Ramaphosa expressed surprise, saying he’d never seen the video, Trump said he didn't know where in South Africa it was filmed.

Trump’s team played the video from a post to X (formerly Twitter) by @realMaalouf, an account that has spread false claims in the past. It had also been posted by @twatterbaas, another unreliable source and one that counted Musk as one of its two subscribers. 

That the white crosses in the video are burial sites is straightforwardly false, as has been noted elsewhere and confirmed by people involved or still living in the area. The crosses were symbolic, part of a September 2020 protest near Normandien to commemorate murdered farmers. Other footage of the protest shows the crosses more clearly.

The 2020 protest came after the murders of farmers Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were shot along with their dog when they returned home to their farm. Two men were later convicted, and a third pleaded guilty. They had broken in while the couple were away, and were reportedly planning to force them to open the farm safe. 

The protest was organised by a South African grassroots movement called Move One Million, and was one of several local demonstrations that day. The Normandien protest honoured the Raffertys and urged the government to do more to stop violent rural crime.

However the broader Move One Million protest had a different focus. It was aimed at “a bent and corrupt system”, with participants protesting everything from corruption and gender-based violence to Covid vaccinations. Some even displayed symbols and slogans associated with the debunked Q-Anon conspiracy movement.

While it isn’t clear exactly how many crosses were in the video, Trump’s claim seems to have been invented whole cloth rather than based on reliable information.

One farmer at the 2020 protest, Darrell Brown, told the national broadcaster: “There’s over 500 crosses making an avenue here today”, and said that “each and every one of these crosses represents almost ten commercial farmers that have been murdered over the last few years”. 

This would suggest around 5 000 murders in the “last few years” before the protest - a number far higher than Trump’s claim of approximately a thousand”. But neither number is accurate.

Earlier in 2020, an AfriForum report counted 596 “farm murders”, over the previous 10 years (2010-2019). For the financial years 2010/11 to 2019/20, official police statistics also showed just under 600 murders. 

No available figure comes close to that quoted by Trump. This also challenges Trump’s claims about who the victims are. 

Trump takes the number of crosses in the video to (literally) represent not only the scale of farm murders in the country, but of murders of white farmers – a claim fundamental to his argument that white South Africans are being targeted. But the video does not present evidence that white South Africans are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime.

Even if the crosses represent nearly 600 people killed over 10 years (fewer than Trump claimed), it has never been claimed that all of these people were white farmers or their relatives. 

AfriForum’s report did not include the race of the murder victims. Farm owners are more likely to be white, given that white people own the majority of agricultural land in South Africa as a result of historical policies that favoured white South Africans. 

But this does not mean that everyone who lives, works, or simply visits a rural area is white. (Note: for more on the complexity of this issue, see the 2022 book ‘Farm killings in South Africa’ by the researcher Nechama Brodie, who has previously covered this topic for Africa Check)

There is no evidence that the protest shown in the video was only about white farmers. And Darrell Brown, the protestor interviewed by the SABC, said that the message of the protest was: “Farm murders must stop. I don’t mean just murders of white commercial farmers, farm murders must stop.”

Black farmers were also present and called on the government to support all farmers.

Despite its focus on the Raffertys, there’s also no evidence that all participants were “there to pay respects to their family member who was killed”, as Trump claimed. 

To support his argument about farm murders, Trump later held up a thick stack of printed pages he claimed showed “people that recently got killed”. 

Flipping through the stack, Trump said: “These are articles over the last few days. Death of people. Death, death, death. Horrible death”. But the articles are not all recent farm murder reports. 

1: Verified attack – but not murder

The first image Trump held up shows photos of a white couple with visible facial injuries. The heading of the first printed-out article reads “BRUTAL FARM ATTACK IN SOUTH AFRICA: Elderly Man Beaten, Hacked with Machete, Left for Dead”. 

The same headline is used in multiple Facebook posts, none of which mentions a source for the claim.

We found a news article with matching incident details, published by a local news outlet. These correspond to a police report at the time for a crime categorised as a robbery. While the report did detail what could be termed a “farm attack”, it did not say either victim had been killed. 

2: Facts among fakes

The second page Trump displayed was an  article by South African news outlet TimesLive titled “Manhunt launched after brutal murder of 78-year-old farmer at Limpopo farm”. 

The article reports a real incident on a farm in the South African province of Limpopo. An elderly white male victim was found dead at a farm on 30 April 2025, with severe head injuries. This was confirmed by police in a statement on 2 May which identified the man as a farmer. 

3: The ‘American Thinker’

The third article Trump showed was headlined: “Black terrorists talk ‘seizing the means of production’ in South Africa”.

A quick Google search for this headline led us to a March 2025 article posted on a website called “American Thinker”. The site has been rated as a questionable and “hyperpartisan” source by media watchdogs.    

The article itself does not describe any farm killings. It links to a social media post from an X account, @twatterbaas, which has been investigated for spreading disinformation. 

The post depicts a scene from a 2018 documentary called “Farmlands” by Lauren Southern. The documentary claims to show the “plight of South African farmers”, but has come under scrutiny for its factual errors. 

4: Legitimate murder – from 1999 

The fourth article presented came from the Daily Mail, a UK tabloid newspaper often criticised for sensationalism and unreliable sources. 

The article is headlined: “Why white South Africans are fleeing surging violence and 'racist' laws for new lives in America, reveals SUE REID”. 

An archived version of the article reveals that it incorrectly describes the “forcible seizing” of land due to the Expropriation Act, a claim Africa Check has debunked. 

Among unfounded claims of land grabs, and a glowing review of South Africa’s “whites-only” town, Orania, the article describes a murder from 1999. 

5: Verbal attacks of “refugees”

“White South African couple say that they were attacked violently,” Trump said while he held up another article.

But the article, from the conservative leaning US tabloid the New York Post, is actually headlined: “White South African couple say they’re victims of racial attacks — and can’t wait to be in Trump’s America”.

It recounts a farm-related incident where two white farmers said their fence was destroyed and that they were racially abused verbally at home.

While it is unclear whether the verbal abuse happened, the article does not mention a violent attack or murder. 

6: The ‘American Thinker’ strikes again

One especially puzzling article Trump displayed is titled ‘Let’s talk about Africa, which is where tribalism takes you’, from the American Thinker website. 

Holding up one page with a photo showing a scene of people in protective gear surrounded by body bags, Trump claimed: “These are all white farmers that are being buried”. 

But this is false. The far-right website article discusses tribalism in Africa with only a brief mention of South Africa’s land policies, and no reference to farm attacks or white farmers. 

The photo Trump referred to is a screengrab from a YouTube video on the official account of WION News. It shows Red Cross workers responding to a massacre of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Goma city in February 2025. The American Thinker had correctly identified the image, but Trump misrepresented it.  

7: The opinionated stance 

Next, Trump held up another New York Post article – this time clearly marked as an opinion piece. After describing media debunks of  “white genocide” in the country, the article speaks about the “plight” of the Afrikaner “refugees”. Pictured in the photo Trump displayed are some members of the first Afrikaner refugee group in the US – not recent victims of a farm murder, as he implied. 

8: Refugee status defence 

The final visible article in Trump’s stack appears to be from the BBC, and was later published on the official White House website, along with some other pieces from the pile, as evidence for the “shocking treatment of white farmers in South Africa”.

In the article, a white farmer, who formed part of the group that arrived in the US, defended the decision to leave South Africa, saying that he had received death threats on WhatsApp.

While some of the articles in the stack do describe violent attacks, sometimes directed at people on farms, many are not recent, lack specific details or are entirely unrelated. In fact, the eight articles Trump chose to exhibit from the stack actually undermined his claim. 

Even if all the visible articles were recent reports of attacks on farms, isolated media reports alone are not definitive evidence of systematic targeted violence against a particular group.