Before US President Donald Trump welcomed his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, into the Oval Office on Wednesday, White House aides had set up two large-screen televisions in the West Wing. The stage was set for what Western media called an “ambush”, as Trump soon asked the staff to dim the lights and play him a video that he claimed proved genocide was being committed against white people in South Africa, driving farmers to flee to the United States.
The four-minute video played on a large screen showed South Africa’s firebrand far-left opposition lawmaker Julius Malema singing “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” — an infamous chant dating back to the apartheid-era fight against white-minority rule. It finished with images of a protest in South Africa where white crosses were placed along a rural roadside to represent murdered farmers — but which Trump falsely said showed their graves.
“You do allow them to take land, and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them,” Trump said, accusing Ramaphosa.
The extraordinary stunt turned the usually staid diplomatic setting of the Oval Office into a stage for Trump’s contention that white South African farmers are being forced off their land and killed.
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