South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday that the claim that white people are persecuted in his country is a “completely false narrative .” It was his latest attempt to push back against allegations by US President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and some white minority groups in South Africa.
South African-born Elon Musk, who has regularly accused South Africa’s black-led government of being anti-white, repeated in a social media post this weekend that some political figures in the country are “actively promoting white genocide. ”
In his weekly message to the nation, Mr Ramaphosa said South Africans “should not allow external events to divide us or pit us against each other”.
“In particular, we should challenge the completely false narrative that our country is a place where people of a certain race or culture are targeted for persecution.”
Mr. Ramaphosa did not name names, but his denial referred to allegations by Mr. Trump and others that South Africa is deliberately mistreating a white minority group known as Afrikaners by encouraging violent attacks on their farms and introducing legislation to seize their land.
These allegations were at the heart of an executive order issued by Mr. Trump last month, which cut funding to South Africa to punish the government while offering Afrikaners refugee status in the United States.
Afrikaners are descendants of Dutch and French settlers who arrived in South Africa over 300 years ago. They were at the heart of the apartheid government, which systematically oppressed non-whites, although South Africa largely succeeded in reconciling its many racial groups after the end of apartheid in 1994.
In his post on X, influential Trump adviser Musk cited a political rally last Friday in South Africa where Black leaders of a far-left opposition party sang a song with the lyrics: “Kill the Boer, the farmer .” Boer is a word for an Afrikaner.
“Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that actively promotes white genocide,” Musk wrote. He added a link to a video of the rally.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X late Monday that the song “is a chant that incites violence. South African leaders and politicians must take steps to protect Afrikaners and other disadvantaged minorities. The United States is proud to offer these people who qualify for admission to our country, despite this horrific threat of violence that continues. ”
The party in question, the Economic Freedom Fighters, is the fourth largest in parliament and a political opponent of Mr. Ramaphosa’s African National Congress. It won 9.5% of the vote in last year’s national elections. It has faced scrutiny for previously stoking racial tensions and for singing the song, which was used during apartheid as a call to fight government oppression.
The song’s current use has been criticized by some in South Africa, including other political parties, and a group representing Afrikaners has challenged its use in court. More than a decade ago, the song was deemed hate speech and banned by a court.
But it was the subject of several other legal proceedings before a 2022 ruling found it was not hate speech and was protected by freedom of expression because there was no evidence it incited violence. The EFF says it is a historical chant that should not be taken literally and has sometimes changed the lyrics to “kiss the Boer. “
Since Mr. Trump’s executive order, the South African government has sought to dispel what it says is misinformation about white farmers, who are sometimes victims of violent attacks in their homes. The government has condemned the attacks, but experts say there is no evidence that white people are being widely targeted and that they are, in fact, part of South Africa’s extremely high crime rate, which affects all races.
The Afrikaner group claims that police have sometimes undercounted farm homicides in official statistics. It recently said it had figures showing there were eight farm homicides in the three months between October and December last year, while police recorded only one.
According to police statistics, there were a total of 6,953 homicides in South Africa during the same period.
