South African political party reacts to Donald Trump’s ‘white genocide’ claim rejected by President Ramaphosa by issuing statement: ‘Kill the Boer, kill the farmer!’
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A South African political party has responded to Donald Trump’s claims that ‘white genocide’ is happening in the country, issuing a statement which includes the phrase ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer, Victory is Certain.’
The words come from a South African chant referring to white farmers, which is rooted in the anti-apartheid struggle and has been defended by rights campaigners as a metaphor rather than a call for ethnic violence.
During his meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, Trump played a controversial video which he said evidenced claims of violence against Afrikaans farmers.
The montage featured clips of speeches from Julius Malema, the founder and leader of the communist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, who regularly uses the ‘Shoot the Boer, Shoot the farmer’ at rallies.
‘Our government policy is completely against what [Malema] was saying, even in the parliament, and they’re a small minority party, which is allowed to exist in terms of our constitution,’ Ramaphosa said afterwards.
‘But you do allow them to take land?’ Trump then asked, to which Ramaphosa repeatedly insisted ‘no’. He explained that Malema was not a member of government and instead part of a minority opposition party.
The EFF, which advocates for militarism and radical land ownership reforms in South Africa, condemned both Ramaphosa and Trump in a statement shared after the meeting.
The party stated in a press briefing that the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant used by Malema is ‘a song that expresses the desire to destroy the system of white minority control over the resources of South Africa.’
EFF founder Julius Malema responded angrily to the meeting, writing on X: ‘A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me’
During his meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, Trump played a controversial video which he said evidenced claims of violence against Afrikaans farmers
It went on to point out that the song was considered as part of African heritage by the Equality Court, which also said the song should not be interpreted literally. The decision was then ratified by the country’s top courts.
The EFF said it was ‘proud that its legislative and political agenda,’ led by Malema, ‘has shaken the corridors of imperialism in Washington.’
It added that Malema ‘can be considered in the lines of great revolutionaries’, and attacked Trump and what it called his ‘illiterate rants’.
It also condemned Trump’s calls for Malema to be arrested and added that it was ‘concerned by this call that something must be done to stop the EFF President from chanting a liberation heritage song.’
The three-page briefing was then signed off with the phrase ‘Dhubula iBhulu!’ meaning ‘Shoot the Boer!’ as well as ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer! Victory is Certain!’
‘No amount of international interference will derail the struggle for black liberation,’ the EFF wrote on X.
Malema responded angrily to the meeting, writing on X: ‘A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me.
‘No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about white genocide.
‘We will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency.’
EFF MP Carl Niehaus also condemned claims that the EFF is a racist and anti-white party by pointing to his presence in it as a white man as evidence to the contrary.
He told parliament that the EFF pro-black and Pan-Africanist organisation, and that it is actively anti-racist.
Trump made Ramaphosa watch a video which purportedly backed up his claims and also held up printouts of various newspaper articles which he said were evidence
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was bombarded by video segments and news clips purporting to show a ‘white genocide’ happening in his country
Trump ambushed Ramaphosa at talks on Wednesday with a video, a large part of which included EFF rallies, designed to support claims of the ‘persecution’ of white farmers.
He had intended the 4.30-minute video, which has been widely shared on social media in recent weeks, to be evidence of a campaign to kill white farmers in what he says amounts to a ‘genocide’.
The video was meant to play into Trump’s claims that the government is expropriating white farms and shows Malema saying: ‘South Africans occupy land, that’s who we are.’
‘These are people that are officials,’ Trump claimed.
Malema is not in government and his party came fourth in last year’s elections with only 9.5 percent of the vote and has never been in government.
Trump suggested that Malema’s use of the chant was a real call to kill ‘boers’, farmers from the Afrikaans minority that led the previous apartheid government.
The videos Trump showed to the South African delegation included speeches from EFF leader Julius Malema, whose trademark song at rallies is ‘Shoot the Boer, Shoot the farmer’
The highly controversial chant is decades old and was a rallying cry during the struggle against white-minority rule, which ended in 1994.
There have been several calls for it to be banned but the courts have ruled that it should be considered in its historical context.
As well as failing to provide evidence of genocide, the video also contained a number of other falsehoods.
One clip shows white crosses erected along a winding road where dozens of cars and trucks are lined up.
‘These are burial sites,’ Trump said. ‘Those cars are… stopped to pay respect to their family members who were killed.’
The footage is from a 2020 protest where crosses were placed along a rural road following the murder of a couple on their farm in Normandien, according to videos and press articles from the time.
They do not mark the sites of graves. The murderers were convicted to life imprisonment in 2022.
Separately, Trump shared clippings which he said showed white farmers in South Africa ‘are being killed in large numbers.’
While farmers have been killed, their numbers are small in the larger context of crime in South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, which has long pushed a campaign to shed light on farm murders, counted 49 such killings in 2023.
In comparison, police recorded a total of 27,621 murders between April 2023 and March 2024 – about 75 people killed every day. Most of the victims are young black men in urban areas.
The EFF, which advocates for militarism and radical land ownership reforms in South Africa, condemned both Ramaphosa and Trump in a statement shared after the meeting
Earlier this year, Ramaphosa signed The Expropriation Act into law, allowing the government to take land in specific instances where it is not being used, or where it would be in the public interest if it is redistributed.
It aims to address some of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid era, when Black people had land taken away from them and were forced to live in areas designated for non-white citizens.
South Africa’s white population – which includes Afrikaners, the descendants of mainly Dutch-colonial settlers – amounts to roughly seven per cent of the country’s total population.
More than 30 years after the end of apartheid, this demographic still owns some 72 per cent of the country’s private farmland, according to government data.
