In a controversial meeting at the White House on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump presented a misidentified image as alleged evidence of mass killings of white farmers in South Africa—a conspiracy theory long debunked by experts and fact-checkers.
During the Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump held up a print-out of a screenshot taken from a Reuters video shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), falsely claiming it depicted the burial of white South African farmers.
“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” Trump asserted, showing the image to Ramaphosa. In reality, the footage was taken in Goma, eastern Congo, following a deadly offensive by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, and showed humanitarian workers handling body bags after violent clashes. The original video was filmed by Reuters journalist Djaffar Al Katanty and published on February 3.
“In view of all the world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by Black people,” Al Katanty said. “That day, it was extremely difficult for journalists to get in … I had to negotiate directly with M23 and coordinate with the ICRC to be allowed to film. Only Reuters has video.”
The image was taken from a blog post by the conservative website American Thinker, which did not label the image but sourced it from YouTube with a link to Reuters’ footage. While American Thinker’s managing editor Andrea Widburg admitted that Trump had “misidentified the image,” she defended the article’s broader message about alleged pressure on white South Africans and sharply criticised Ramaphosa’s government.
During the televised portion of the meeting, Trump interrupted proceedings to show the misleading video and flipped through printed blog posts and articles, repeating dramatic phrases like, “death, death, death, horrible death,” in an attempt to support the disproven claim that white farmers in South Africa are targets of a systematic campaign of violence.
This conspiracy theory, which has gained traction in far-right circles, claims that white South Africans are facing genocide—an assertion rejected by international human rights
organisations and the South African government.
President Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington was intended to stabilise US–South Africa relations following Trump’s repeated criticisms of South Africa’s land reform policies and its handling of racial issues. South Africa has firmly denied any policies or practices that target its white minority unfairly.
The White House has not responded to requests for comment on the incident.
Reuters has confirmed the accuracy and origin of the footage used in the image, reaffirming that it was unrelated to events in South Africa.
Melissa Enoch
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