South African President Cyril Ramaphosa stated Monday that the declare that white individuals are being persecuted in his nation is a “utterly false narrative.” It was his newest try to push again towards allegations made by President Trump, White Home advisor Elon Musk and a few white minority teams in South Africa.
South African-born Musk, who has commonly accused the nation’s Black-led authorities of being antiwhite, repeated a declare final weekend in a social media put up that a few of the nation’s political figures are “actively selling white genocide.”
Ramaphosa stated in his weekly message to the nation that South Africans “mustn’t enable occasions past our shores to divide us or flip us towards one another.”
“Particularly, we must always problem the utterly false narrative that our nation is a spot through which individuals of a sure race or tradition are being focused for persecution.”
Ramaphosa didn’t point out names, however his denial was a reference to the allegations by Trump and others that South Africa is intentionally mistreating a white minority group often called Afrikaners by encouraging violent assaults on their farms and introducing a regulation designed to grab their land.
The allegations have been central to an govt order issued by Trump final month slicing funding to South Africa to punish the federal government, whereas providing Afrikaners refugee standing in the US.
Afrikaners are descendants of primarily Dutch and French colonial settlers who first got here to South Africa greater than 300 years in the past. They have been on the coronary heart of the apartheid authorities that systematically oppressed nonwhites, though South Africa has been largely profitable at reconciling its many racial teams after apartheid resulted in 1994.
In his put up on X, Musk cited a political rally Friday in South Africa the place Black leaders of a far-left opposition social gathering sang a tune that has the lyrics “Kill the Boer, the farmer.” Boer is a phrase that refers to an Afrikaner.
“Only a few individuals know that there’s a main political social gathering in South Africa that’s actively selling white genocide,” Musk wrote. He linked to a video of the rally.
The social gathering in query, the Financial Freedom Fighters, is the fourth greatest in Parliament and a political opponent of Ramaphosa’s African Nationwide Congress. It received 9.5% of the vote in final yr’s nationwide election. It has come below scrutiny for stirring racial tensions earlier than and for singing the tune, which was used throughout apartheid as a name to battle towards oppression.
The tune’s modern-day use has been criticized by some in South Africa, together with by different political events, and a gaggle representing Afrikaners challenged its use in court docket. It was dominated hate speech and, in impact, banned by a court docket greater than a decade in the past.
However it was the topic of a number of different authorized circumstances earlier than a 2022 ruling discovered that it was not hate speech and guarded below freedom of speech as a result of there was no proof it incited violence.
Since Trump’s govt order, the South African authorities has sought to dispel what it says is misinformation over white farmers, who’re typically victims of violent assaults of their properties. The federal government has condemned the assaults, however specialists say there is no such thing as a proof of any widespread concentrating on of whites and they’re a part of South Africa’s extraordinarily excessive charges of violent crime, which have an effect on all races.
The group representing Afrikaners says the police have typically undercounted farm homicides in official statistics. It not too long ago stated it had figures displaying there have been eight farm homicides within the three-month interval between October and December final yr when police solely recorded one.
There have been 6,953 homicides throughout South Africa throughout that very same interval, police statistics confirmed.
Imray writes for the Related Press. AP author Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
