South Africa police minister says Trump ‘twisted’ facts to push baseless genocide claims

By GERALD IMRAY and MICHELLE GUMEDE JOHANNESBURG AP South Africa s top law enforcement official noted Friday that U S President Donald Trump wrongly claimed that a video he displayed in the Oval Office was of burial sites for more than white farmers and he twisted the facts to push a false narrative about mass killings of white people in his country Related Articles Belgian princess left in doubt about her Harvard future following Trump s foreign pupil ban Justice Department reaches deal to allow Boeing to avoid prosecution over Max crashes North Korean leader furious over failed destroyer launch vows to arrest those responsible China criticizes US ban on Harvard s international students Trump s company is divided on how to tackle the president s vow to ease sanctions on Syria Police Minister Senzo Mchunu was talking about a video clip that was played during the meeting between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday that displayed an aerial view of a rural road with lines of white crosses erected on either side Now this is very bad Trump mentioned as he referred to the clip that was part of a longer video that was played in the meeting These are burial sites right here Burial sites over a thousand of white farmers and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning Mchunu noted the crosses did not mark graves or burial sites but were a temporary memorial put up in to protest the killings of all farmers across South Africa They were put up during a funeral procession for a white couple who were killed in a robbery on their farm Mchunu announced A son of the couple who were killed and a local district member who took part in the procession also announced the crosses do not represent burial sites and were taken down after the protest South Africa struggles with extremely high levels of violent crime although farm killings make up a small percentage of the country s overall homicides Both white and Black farmers are attacked and sometimes killed and the establishment has condemned the violence against both groups Whites make up around of South Africa s million people but generally still have a much better standard of living than the Black majority more than years after the end of the apartheid system of racial segregation Whites make up the majority of the country s wealthier commercial farmers Mchunu noted Trump s false proposes that the crosses represented more than burial sites was part of his genocide story referring to the U S president s baseless accusations in new weeks that there is a widespread campaign in South Africa to kill white farmers and take their land that he has noted amounts to a genocide They are not graves They don t represent graves Mchunu mentioned regarding the video that has become prominent on social media since it was shown in the White House And it was unfortunate that those facts got twisted to fit a false narrative about crime in South Africa We have respect for the president of the United States Mchunu added But we have no respect for his genocide story whatsoever President Donald Trump meets South Africa s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House Wednesday May in Washington AP Photo Evan Vucci The White House when urged about Mchunu s remarks pointed back to press secretary Karoline Leavitt s comments a day earlier at her briefing when she stated that the video manifested crosses that represent the dead bodies of people who were racially persecuted by their authorities Of the more than homicides in South Africa from January through March six occurred on farms and of those one victim was white revealed Mchunu In principle we do not categorize people by race but in the context of maintains of genocide of white people we need to unpack the killings in this category he announced Lourens Bosman who is a former lawmaker in the national Parliament noted he took part in the procession shown in the video the Trump administration played It happened near the town of Newcastle in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal in September The crosses were symbols to white and Black farmers and farmworkers who had been killed across South Africa over the previous years Bosman explained Trump s falsehoods that South Africa s regime is fueling the persecution and killing of its minority white farmers has been strongly denied by the country which says the statements are rooted in misinformation Ramaphosa pushed for this week s meeting with Trump in what he declared was an attempt to change Trump s mind over South Africa and correct misconceptions about the country to rebuild ties Trump issued an executive order on Feb that cut all U S financial assistance to South Africa and accused it of mistreating white Afrikaner farmers and seizing their land The order accused Ramaphosa s authorities of fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners Trump s executive order also accused South Africa of pursuing an anti-American foreign framework and specifically criticized its decision to launch a development at the International Court of Justice accusing U S ally Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza The order accused South Africa of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas through that scenario AP Africa news https apnews com hub africa