Trump tweets false Fox claim about South Africa
He incorrectly says white farmers face ‘large scale killing’
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — President Donald Trump waded into South Africa’s proposal to seize land from white farmers, saying in a post on Twitter late Wednesday that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study” the “large scale killing of farmers” — a claim disputed by official figures and the country’s biggest farmer’s group.
“I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. ‘South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers,’ ” Trump wrote.
Trump’s comment came after Fox News host Tucker Carlson presented a late-night program on South Africa, including land seizures and homicides, and described President Cyril Ramaphosa as “a racist.”
The tweet gives prominence to a false narrative pushed by some right-wing groups in South Africa that there have been numerous seizures of white-owned land and widespread killings of white farmers.
On Thursday, the South African minister of international relations, Lindiwe Sisulu, described the tweet as “regrettable” and “based on false information.” The government said it would seek clarification from the U.S. Embassy, and Sisulu planned to “communicate with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on the matter through diplomatic channels.”
The government has said expropriating farms is necessary to deal with long-standing inequities and that only unused land would be subject to seizure, suggesting that land that is being actively farmed would be safe.
The number of killings of farmers, including farm workers, is at a 20-year low, 47 in the fiscal year 2017-18, according to research published in July by AgriSA, a farmers’ organization in South Africa. That is down from 66 during the fiscal year before. The figures were consistent with a steady decline of violence since a peak in 1998, when 153 were killed.
South Africa recorded 19,016 murder cases from April 2016 to March 2017, according to the South Africa Police Service. The national murder rate last year was 34.1 per 100,000 people, but the number of people living on farms is not fully known, which makes comparisons difficult.
Most official statistics do not break down homicides by race.