Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has criticised US President Donald Trumps claim of a genocide targeting Afrikaners in South Africa, revealing that two farm owners killed in the latest farm attacks were black.
Trump reiterated his claims during a White House meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday 21 May, insisting that thousands of white farmers were being killed.
Senzo Mchunu disputes Trumps genocide claimsHowever, Mchunu presented crime statistics on Friday 23 May that painted a different picture from Trumps claims. The stats covered the fourth quarter of the 2024/2025 financial year, or 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025.
During this period, six people were killed in attacks on commercial farms. Of these, two were farm owners, one a dweller, two were employees and one a manager.
In principle, we do not categorise people by race, but in the context of claims of genocide of white people, we need to unpack the killings in this category, Mchunu said.
The two farm owners that were murdered during the fourth quarter were African and not white. Further to that, the two farm employees and one farm manager were also African. It is the one farm dweller that was white.
The history of farm murders in the country has always been distorted and reported in an unbalanced way the truth is that farm murders have always included African people in more numbers.
Video of crossesDuring the White House meeting, Trump played a video that depicted white crosses lined up on a road, claiming they were graves of white people that had been killed.
Mchunu clarified that the road is located between Newcastle and Normandien in KwaZulu-Natal, and that the video depicts a protest by the farming community around the area.
They were protesting the murder of Mr G Rafferty and Mrs VL Rafferty by criminals in their home on 30 September 2020 on Hanover farm, the Minister explained.