By Joshua Tosin Ogunsakin 
US President Donald Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday with unproven claims that white people are being systematically killed in the country.
During a tense meeting in the Oval Office, Mr Trump alleged that white farmers faced “persecution” and were “fleeing” South Africa. However, South African officials and experts reject these claims as false.
The US President made several disputed statements during the meeting. “People flee South Africa for their own safety,” Trump said. “Authorities confiscate their land, and in many cases, people kill them.”
To support his argument, Trump dimmed the lights in the Oval Office and played a video showing a communist politician singing a controversial anti-apartheid song that includes lyrics about killing a farmer. He also showed printed newspaper articles, claiming they proved that people had murdered white South Africans.
“Here’s burial sites all over the place, these are all white farmers that people have buried,” he said of one article.
President Ramaphosa remained calm throughout the presentation and firmly rejected Trump’s claims. When shown the videos, Ramaphosa responded: “I’d like to know where that is because this [the videos] I’ve never seen.”
He explained that the speeches Trump showed in his video montage did not represent official government policy. “What you saw, the speeches that were being made, that is not government policy. We have a multi-party democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves, political parties to adhere to various policies.
“And in many cases or in some cases, those policies do not go along with government policy.
“Our government policy completely opposes what he [a person in the video montage] said. Even in the parliament. And they are a small minority party which our constitution allows to exist.”
Regarding the alleged persecution, Ramaphosa said: “We are completely opposed to that.”
South Africa does have high murder rates, but experts say they find no evidence that white people face specific targeting. Black people make up the overwhelming majority of murder victims in South Africa. South African officials reject allegations that white people face disproportionate levels of crime compared to other groups.
Despite the lack of evidence supporting his claims, Trump has cut all US assistance to South Africa and welcomed several dozen white South African farmers to the US as refugees.