Trump video on SA farm murders contains some falsehoods

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa at talks Wednesday with a video meant to support unfounded claims of the "persecution" of white farmers.

- AFP

Trump intended the 4:30-minute video played at their meeting in the White House, and which has been widely shared on social media in recent weeks, to be evidence of a campaign to kill white farmers in what he says amounts to a "genocide". But the video contained many falsehoods.

The crosses are not gravesites

One clip shows white crosses erected along a winding road where dozens of cars and trucks are lined up.

"These are burial sites," Trump said. "Those cars are... stopped to pay respect to their family members who were killed."

The footage is from a 2020 protest where crosses were placed along a rural road following the murder of a couple on their farm in Normandien, according to videos and press articles from the time.

They do not mark the sites of graves. The murderers were convicted to life imprisonment in 2022.