Like many Americans, I watched the extraordinary meeting between President Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last Wednesday. It was one of the most fascinating encounters I have ever witnessed.
President Ramaphosa was in the Oval Office, hat in hand, seeking to restore more than $1 billion of U.S. foreign aid that President Trump had suspended because of the ongoing murders of white Afrikaans farmers in his country.
The corrupt legacy media was quick to call Trump’s claims that white farmers are being targeted by black racist groups false and baseless.
Not surprisingly, the legacy media are once again lying to us.
While the murder of white farmers in South Africa may not rise to the level of archetypal genocide, in which many thousands of people are slaughtered in a coordinated manner by a sovereign government, there is no doubt that for the past several years, marauding gangs of black extremists and thugs have murdered scores of South Africa’s white farmers.
Official statistics on farm attacks are vague because human rights groups insist there has been a whitewash by the infamously corrupt—and possibly complicit—South African government.
The Transvaal Agricultural Union, representing commercial farmers, and the civil rights group AfriForum have released the most reliable numbers.
According to the TAU, last year there were 345 attacks resulting in 70 deaths — the highest death toll since 2017. In 2023, there were 318 attacks resulting in 64 deaths, and the year before that, there were 333 attacks resulting in 67 deaths.
In total, between 1998 and the end of 2023, 2,548 people have been murdered in farm attacks — 1,487 farmers, 790 family members, 186 farm employees, and 85 people who happened to be visiting the farm at the time.
While South Africa has one of the highest rates of violent crime anywhere in the world, the attacks on white farmers are no ordinary crimes. They are especially brutal and horrific, often including hours of torture and rape before the victims are killed.
Naturally, our dishonest legacy media refuse to cover that story because it is an inconvenient truth about anti-white racism in South Africa that doesn’t fit their narrative that only white people are racists.
An example of just how brutal and horrific the attacks on white farmers have been was the assault a few years ago on British woman Sue Howarth and her Afrikaans husband, Robert Lynn. The couple was awakened at 2 a.m. by several men breaking into their farm in rural Dullstroom, a small town in northeast South Africa.
What happened to the couple was reported by the Australian commercial news site, News.com.au.
Here is how that news organization reported the story:
“The couple, who had lived in the area for 20 years, were tied up, stabbed, and tortured with a blowtorch for several hours. The masked men stuffed a plastic bag down Mrs. Howarth’s throat and attempted to strangle her husband with a bag around his neck.
“The couple was bundled into their truck, still in their pajamas, and driven to a roadside where they were shot. Mrs. Howarth, 64, a former pharmaceutical company executive, was shot twice in the head. Mr. Lynn, 66, was shot in the neck.
“Miraculously, he survived and managed to flag down a passerby early on Sunday morning. Mrs. Howarth, who police said was “unrecognizable” from her injuries, had multiple skull fractures, gunshot wounds, and “horrific” burns to her breasts.
“Sue was discovered among some trees, lying in a ditch. Her rescuers managed to find her by following her groans of pain and then noticing drag marks from the road into the field.
“Her head was covered with a towel. Her eyes were swollen shut. She was partially clothed, with just scraps of her shirt remaining. Her breasts and upper body were bloody. The plastic bag, shoved down her throat, took some effort to remove because her jaw was clamped down tightly.
“How she managed to breathe with the bag in her throat remains a mystery. One of her rescuers later recalled that she was unresponsive except for the constant groaning.
“She was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support, but died two days later. Due to her British nationality, her murder attracted an unusual amount of overseas media attention.
In a report a few years ago entitled “The Reality of Farm Tortures in South Africa”, AfriForum wrote that “the horror experienced during farm tortures is almost incomprehensible.”
While farmers and their families are often tortured to obtain information, such as the whereabouts of keys to the safe, human rights groups say the excessive brutality is intended to send a message to the general farming community: “Get out of our country!”
“Farmers live in fear, because being a farmer in South Africa is the most dangerous occupation in the world,” Henk van de Graaf, spokesman for the TAU, told reporters recently. “The average murder ratio per 100,000 of the population in the world is nine, I believe. In South Africa, it is 54. But for the South African farming community, it is 138, which is the highest for any occupation in the world.”
During the alleged “ambush” of President Ramaphosa, Trump showed a four-minute video montage in which Julius Malema, founder and head of the Communist Economic Freedom Fighters Party, led some 100,000 followers during a Johannesburg political rally in a violent song that urged followers to kill white farmers. Malema and the thousands of supporters stomped and chanted, “Kill the Boer, Kill the White Farmer, Bury them Alive!”
It was no doubt an embarrassing few minutes for Ramaphosa and his entourage. Not only has Malema been convicted of hate speech, but in 2023, he expressed public support for Hamas, promising to provide money and arms to the terrorist group if his party achieved a majority in South Africa’s National Assembly. He didn’t.
The fact that President Ramaphosa recently signed a controversial land seizure law that allows the expropriation of farmland owned by white farmers also has not helped his standing with President Trump. The law says it can seize land “in circumstances where it is just and equitable and in the public interest to do so.”
That new law was another reason 59 white farmers and their families recently left South Africa and emigrated to the United States. Following Washington’s offer to resettle people from the country’s Afrikaner community, another 70,000 South Africans have expressed interest in moving to the US. Trump and Secretary of State Rubio have indicated they are willing to accept all white Afrikaner farmers who want to leave South Africa and who have been vetted.
The problem for South Africa is that 72 percent of all farmers in the country are white. If they are driven out of the country by black racist groups, South African officials, including the white minister of agriculture, say the nation will not be able to feed itself.
“We need those farmers to produce food for our country,” Minister of Agriculture, John Henry Steenhuisen, said during the Oval Office encounter.
At the Oval Office meeting, Trump left little doubt that if South Africa wants to see a resumption of some $1.4 billion in annual American aid, it will have to stop the persistent murder of white farmers.
While the deceitful legacy media disparage Trump’s purported ambush, I view the open Oval Office meetings as refreshingly unrestrained and honest.
President Trump’s method of negotiation and diplomacy is strikingly transparent and candid. As a former reporter, I am pleased to see this kind of transparency. The fact that many in the mainstream media disparage such openness tells me they are not traditional journalists, but polemicists and propagandists who prefer censorship to candor.
Foreign leaders who visit the White House have been warned. When you sit in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, all the cards are on the table, no holds are barred, and Americans are watching.
The result? We are getting to see just how the sausage is made when it comes to diplomacy and international relations.
It’s about time.
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