The South African President Cyril Ramaphosa denied of a purposeful racial genocide. However, US President Donald Trump interrupted him, stating, “The farmers are not Black. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but the farmers are not Black. The people are being killed in large numbers, and you saw all of those gravesites.”
Trump posted reams of reports claiming violence across in his fervent advocacy of this myth. But it turned out that the images were not from South Africa at all. Trump displayed a printout from the far-right website American Thinker during the press conference on Wednesday, May 21, which allegedly backed up his assertions.
The blog post did, however, contain a screenshot from a YouTube video that showed how Red Cross personnel responded to mass murder and rape in Goma, which is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not South Africa.
One X user shared a picture of Trump holding up the photo and wrote: “One of the most embarrassing moments for Americans was when Donald Trump pulled out a picture from the Congo and claimed it was a burial site for victims of his imaginary ‘white genocide’ in South Africa.”
What a fucking joke: Trump presented photos and images as supposed evidence of mass killings of white South Africans that were, in fact, not from South Africa but from the Democratic Republic of Congo 😂
I can’t wait to see MAGA defend this one… The DRC 2000+ miles away.. pic.twitter.com/0dx1U7SPzM
— Agent Self FBI (@RetroAgent12) May 22, 2025
Another X user commented out: “[Trump] sat in the Oval Office and showed photos of the burial site of black women who were raped and burned alive in Congo claiming it shows the ‘burial site’ of white farmers. What a clown.” A third person commented: “Trump is such an immense piece of s—. What an appalling human being. And I use the term very loosely.”
Tensions were evident during a widely reported meeting with Ramaphosa. Trump remained steadfast in his claims that white farmers in South Africa were the target of rampant violence. Several academics and government officials have questioned and refuted his assertion that the South African government was not doing enough to address these alleged mass deaths.
Is anyone even surprised that Trump was showing the South African president pictures of the “white genocide” that weren’t even from South Africa https://t.co/HbYHu8Xn2Y pic.twitter.com/BCoUDXiQa2
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) May 22, 2025
“There is criminality in our country,” Ramaphosa agreed, as he spoke with reporters next to Trump. His answer was to make clear that South Africa’s violence is multifaceted and does not target any particular racial group.
“People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity, are not only white people — the majority of them are Black people,” he noted, highlighting the larger picture of criminality in his nation.
