‘We are not pawns’: Prominent white South Africans hit back at Trump’s claims they are being ‘killed and slaughtered’

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email Email * SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice

A group of more than 40 prominent white South Africans have hit back at Donald Trump’s claims they are being “slaughtered,” telling the president that they are “not pawns in America’s culture wars.”

In an open letter, the group – which included political analysts, economists, lawyers, journalists, religious figures and historians – rejected the narrative that they were the victims of racial persecution and even genocide, saying that it was “not only misleading, but dangerous.”

It comes after Trump’s repeated and disputed claims that white South Africans are being killed and their lands are being confiscated, with the president declaring that the U.S. would be boycotting the upcoming G20 summit of world leaders, which is being held in South Africa.

The U.S. president wrote on his social media site: “Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.”

Earlier this year, in contrast to its sweeping and aggressive anti-immigration policies, the Trump administration also allowed a small group of Afrikaners into the U.S., despite their home country denying they were refugees at all.

open image in gallery During a tense meeting at the Oval Office in May, the president ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa. The president has continuously claimed that white South Africans are being killed and their lands are being confiscated ( AP )

“As South Africans and Afrikaners, we write this response with concern and conviction,” the Afrikaners’ letter read. “The Trump administration’s plan to prioritize white South Africans for refugee status, while drastically cutting overall refugee admissions, have brought our identity into the spotlight in ways that are deeply troubling.

“We reject the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. This framing, now being used to support the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory in the United States, is not only misleading, but also dangerous.

“It distorts the realities of South Africa, weaponizes our history, and reduces a complex social context and necessary leveling of playing fields into a simplistic symbol of white decline.”

Assertions that violence against white farmers in South Africa is widespread have been denied previously by organizations led by Afrikaners dedicated to tracking such attacks. White farmers own about 70 percent of commercial farmland in the country, despite making up a minority of the population, about 7 percent.

However, fewer than 150 attacks involving farmers occurred during the entirety of 2023, according to the Afrikaner political group AfriForum.

open image in gallery Earlier this year, in contrast to its sweeping and aggressive anti-immigration policies, the Trump administration allowed a small group of Afrikaners into the U.S. The group was permitted to resettle in the U.S. despite South African officials denying they were refugees at all ( AFP via Getty Images )

In their letter officials added they were most concerned with the “hijacking” of their ethnic identity by fringe groups both in South Africa and abroad, including projects like “Make Afrikaners Great Again.”

Such projects “misrepresent our history and misappropriate our culture to promote exclusionary and racialized ideological agendas,” the letter read.

Throughout his second presidency Trump has pedaled a false and critical narrative around the political climate in South Africa, echoing viral misinformation and claiming that white people, in particular farmers, are being killed in a genocide.

open image in gallery During a tense meeting at the Oval Office in May, the president ambushed Ramaphosa, confronting him with a document that appeared to have information about the Democratic Republic of Congo – some 1,000 miles away from South Africa ( EPA )

During a tense meeting at the Oval Office in May, the president ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa, confronting him with baseless stats and brandishing a documents that appeared to include one that had information and images from the Democratic Republic of Congo – some 1,000 miles away from South Africa.

The president also presented a video clip showing white crosses lining a road in South Africa which he falsely claimed were “burial sites” for white farmers and evidence of “ongoing genocide.” The crosses were in fact a protest organized by local demonstrators over the deaths of two farmers.

South African-born Elon Musk, Trump’s former head of DOGE, has clashed with his home nation over launching his Starlink satellite system there, at one point claiming he was “not allowed to operate in South Africa, because I’m not black,” an apparent reference to the country’s black empowerment laws.

The Independent has contacted the White House for comment over the letter from Afrikaners and on the president’s rhetoric.