Trump’s Manufactured “White Genocide” Serves His Populism – Peter Hain

US President Donald Trump has long embraced a populist political strategy built on white victimhood, and his current  hostility to South Africa reflects that – along with his staged attempt to humiliate South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

During this week’s encounter in the White House, what began as a formal diplomatic meeting including some pleasantries about golf, quickly veered into what has widely been described as an “ambush,” when Trump ordered the lights dimmed and played a video.

It showed rows of white crosses, introduced as a representation of over a thousand murdered white South African farmers. Trump, when asked by Ramaphosa if he knew where the scene was filmed, admitted, “No,” suggesting he had not verified the claims himself.

In fact the imagery was taken from the “Witkruis Monument,” a 2020 protest site in KwaZulu-Natal, which commemorates murdered farmers – black and white alike. It is not a burial site, nor is it a monument specifically for white victims.

Yes, South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but it is young and economically-disadvantaged black men, who are the principle victims of such violence.

Trump’s failure to verify any of the claims he presented may have come from his close associate, tech billionaire, financier, and apartheid-era profiteer Elon Musk, who was present at the meeting, looking notably smug, though remaining silent throughout.

Included within the 5-minute video montage was disgraced former South African President Jacob Zuma, and marginalised populist leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, both making inflammatory comments – neither representing South African government policy.

Yet, with nothing to support his white genocide claims, the Trump administration welcomed 59 white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans to the US, granting them refugee status, despite his blanket ban on all refugee admissions and hostility to asylum claims from conflict zones.

Trump’s South African foray fits neatly into his propaganda and political agenda by elevating  stories of white victimhood to energise his white Christian nationalist base.

His recent executive order cutting critical aid to South Africa has also been interpreted as punishing its government for bringing a war crimes case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Like he did to Zelensky, Trump clearly attempted to humiliate Ramaphosa in a hugely performative political spectacle, in both cases, using diplomatic interactions not as forums for engagement, but as stages for political theatre.

Meanwhile, South Africa, while still struggling with legacy of massive apartheid and colonial inequality, has integrated its white minority into political and economic life.

Indeed, sitting alongside Ramaphosa in the White House was South Africa’s white billionaire Johann Rupert who rebutted Trump’s claims.

White South Africans retain significant economic power and continue to hold representation in government, particularly through the Democratic Alliance, now part of a new governing coalition. And despite being a minority of 7%, whites own around 70% of private farmland.

Portraying white South Africans as systematically persecuted hardly improves US-Africa relations. Instead, it appears more aligned with Trump’s ongoing efforts to cultivate a narrative of global white victimhood as a tool for domestic political gain.

Former anti-apartheid campaigner and Labour Cabinet Minister, Lord Hain’s new book Liberation and Corruption – why freedom movements fail is published in October by Bristol University Press