White genocide lie is apartheid nostalgia

SOUTH Africa stands at a crossroads, haunted by the ghosts of its apartheid past and battered by the failures of its democratic present. Into this breach, a dangerous and persistent myth has taken root and spread, one that not only distorts reality but weaponises white fear and global ignorance for political gain.

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The so-called "white genocide" narrative, parroted by the likes of US President Donald Trump and South African-born, US-based billionaire Elon Musk, did not originate in the White House or Silicon Valley. It was born in the fevered imaginations of white South Africans unwilling to relinquish the privileges and power they amassed during apartheid, and it is now exported to the world as a grotesque justification for racism and reactionary politics.

This is not just a lie. It is a deliberate, cynical strategy to derail South Africa's fragile journey towards justice, to undermine every attempt at equality, and to stoke the flames of apartheid nostalgia no matter the cost to the millions who still live with the pain and deprivation that system created.

The anatomy of a lie

The "white genocide" myth claims that white South Africans, particularly Afrikaner farmers, are the victims of a co-ordinated campaign of violence, enabled or even orchestrated by the black-majority government. Its proponents point to rural crime and farm murders as evidence of ethnic cleansing, ignoring the reality that South Africa's violent crime epidemic affects all communities, with black South Africans overwhelmingly the primary victims.

Last year, South Africa recorded 26232 murders nationwide. Of these, only 44 were associated with farming communities, and just eight of those victims were farmers hardly the numbers one would expect from a genocide. Yet the myth persists, repeated in global far-right forums and amplified by powerful figures abroad.

When Trump, in a recent Oval Office meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa, declared that "there is a genocide occurring against white farmers in South Africa," he was not speaking truth to power.

He was parroting a conspiracy theory that South African courts, the government, and independent observers have thoroughly debunked.