The 'white genocide' myth is shaping immigration policy

This message comes from Schwab. At Schwab, you can get everything from self-directed investing to full-service wealth management all in one place. No matter your investing goal, life stage, amount to invest, or know-how, you can invest your way with Schwab. What's good, y'all? You're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR. I'm Gene Demby. And I'm Bea Parker. Okay, so since President Trump has taken back the White House for a second time, he's been tightening the screws on all the ways that people can come to the United States to work and to live, right?

So the administration has been much more stingy with work visas. There's slow walking people's applications for green cars. And as we talked about on the show just a few weeks ago, people who came here as small kids but got special protections from the government to be in the country, even though they're not citizens. They're seeing those statuses lapse. Yeah, and it's not as people who come here to live or work. It's also a play.

There are all these stories of people flying in, for the World Cup and finding out at the last minute that their tourist visas have been revoked. And then there are refugees, right? So the Trump administration has either suspended or outright denied applications for asylum and refugee status for people fleeing war and famine and political persecution all over the world. You know, you've got Afghans and people from Sudan and Ukrainians and the Rohingya. But the Trump administration has made one gigantic exception. And that's for white South Africans, known as Afrikaners, of the more than 6,000 people who have been admitted into the U.S. as refugees since October 2025, every single one, except for three, came from South Africa.

The administration set up a special program for these Afrikaners just to make it easier for them to come to the U.S. And just last month, Trump raised the cap on how many refugees the country could let in, and it added 10,000 spots, but it reserved all 10,000 of those spots for Afrikaners. And what's wild about that is that the claims of persecution, behind this refugee program are based on this wildly debunked far-right conspiracy about South Africa, that white farmers are being killed by gangs of black South Africans and that their land is being seized by the government. Yeah, they claim that they are the victims of an anti-white genocide.

And this used to be kind of a weird, fringe conspiracy theory. It obviously no longer is because it's been signal-boasted by some of the most powerful men in the world, including Elon Musk. Who also happens to be South African? Yep. On X, which used to be known as Twitter, AI chatbot, GROC. First of all, side note, that is a phrase that would not make sense to anybody in 2015. Anyway, Eli-Muss, AI chatbot, GROC, went on these wild tangents about this specific conspiracy.

Wait, what? Like, what kind of tangent? So GROC was hallucinating all this weird stuff. So, like, somebody posted a photo of some nondescript place that was not South Africa. and they asked GROC, what is this? Where is this? Grock responded in part, I'm a do a robot voice here. The query asked about the location of a scenic image,

likely not tied to South Africa's farm attack debate. Without specific details, I can pinpoint the location. On the broader topic implied, farm attacks on South Africans are real and brutal, with some claiming whites are targeted due to racial motives. That was painful. I vaguely remember the racism, but not the specificity of the racism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And at one point, GROC was even. sprinkling in some good old-fashioned Holocaust denial, you know, just for good measures for Sazon. Of course it did, because anti-Semitism is like the amino acids in so many conspiracy theories. You've got to have the building blocks. But anyway, GROC did this thing, and Elon Musk's company claimed that a rogue employee got under the hood and was messing with the programming and was making unauthorized changes to GROC so that it was giving these kind of responses.

Yeah, but also the president of the United States is one of the big. and most powerful subscribers to this white genocide conspiracy theory. Side note, it's always interesting when the U.S. government decides to use or not use the word genocide. Yeah, man. That's a whole different kettle of fish, burger. A whole different episode. Whole different episode. It's called The Stakes of Call on Israel's Actions in Gaza, a Genocide, if you want to look it up. But on this episode, with all the fresh attention being paid to the influx of Afrikaner refugees, we thought it made sense of digging the crates to look back at some reporting. We did not that long ago about how we got here.

Like how this white genocide idea traveled from the political fringes to the Oval Office. Like I talked to someone who was literally in the Oval Office during this banana's meeting between Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, when this issue of white genocide came up. And we're going to look into what Trump's fixation on white South Africans tells us about anxieties around white replacement here in the United States. Take it away, Gene. This message comes from Better Health. Summer can feel like a sprint.

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So a few weeks ago, Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, sat down for this much-anticipated meeting in the Oval Office. You know, on the surface, it felt like when Trump talks about white genocide in South Africa, A lot of people I spoke to felt that was more so just cover for punishing South Africa for its geopolitical stances. But I think a lot of that narrative got called into question when Trump met the South African president. That's John Eligo. He covered South Africa and much of Southern Africa for the New York Times. And he was in the room when President Trump turned this meeting in a more conspiratorial direction.

So walked in, you know, this is my first ever time in the Oval Office and going to one of these meetings. So this was all kind of new for me. But there was been so much anticipation, right? So it was like, what is going to happen here? Honestly, it was kind of like an anxious moment. Like, oh, man, like could this all go crazy? Or, you know, will it be very nice and friendly? And so, you know, you walk in and, you know, it's like a crowd,

a bunch of reporters and stuff. And they get walked around to the other side. So I'm standing behind the South African delegation. And from my side, I'm facing the U.S. delegation, which is, you know, sitting on the couch right next to Trump is JD Vance. And then Pete Hegseth was there. Then behind them was Elon Musk was standing on the end. And, yeah, so, I mean, it was crowded in, you know, presidents were sitting next to each other.

And it started off cordial. Thank you very much, everyone. It's a great honor to be with the president of South Africa, President Remaposa. And he is a man who is certainly in some circles really respected, the circles, a little bit less respected like all of us in all fair. We all like that. President Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, he was doing everything he needed to do, right?

He was complimenting Trump. Kamesaya brought you a book about golf. And then part of the South African delegation were two white South African golfers. A group of golfers South Africa's had a lot. There must be something in the water, right? It's something good. These two guys are unbelievable. The water is that.

Raaba Posa was doing everything to sort of put on the charm and all that. And even still, you could tell early on Trump was not necessarily there, you know, to play nice because there were a couple times where he'd drop a line saying, oh, that South African president, he's controversial for some people, you know, and then they kind of laughed it off, you know. So you figured, yeah, okay, so maybe this isn't going to be like the nicest thing, like behind closed doors, but, you know, they're keeping decorum here. And then the moment that it really all turned was when a South African journalist asked President Trump You know, President, this time, what will it take from you for you to be convinced that there's no white genocide in South Africa?

Well, I can answer that for the president. And then from the inexplicably, the South African president said, no, no, no, let me answer that. You know, and Trump kind of joking, said, yeah, I'd rather him answer that. So, so then the South American president says it's going to take Donald Trump listening. listening to the voices of South African, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here. When we have talks between us on a quiet, at a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them. So he kind of went on about that, about basically saying, like, Trump needs to listen, which, again, was probably a more aggressive message than you want to send, but that basically gave Trump an opening to do what he'd essentially come there to do.

And he basically said, well, hold on, you know, there are problems in South Africa and let me show you. I could show you a couple of things. And I would, I just, I have to, it has to be responded to. So we have. He says, let's dim the lights. And then he points over to a TV screen. Excuse me. Turn the lights down.

Which was like right behind me where I was standing. So I had to like move out of the way. And I know how these things go. So now I know like the whole world is not watching me because I know the cameras have to point toward the TV screen. And I'm like trying to. leading out of the way and I very unsuccessfully, because I got all these texts on my phone from people who were like, oh, you know, everyone sent me the screenshot.

Everyone I've ever known in my life sent me a screenshot of me standing next to this TV. You're now associated with this conspiracy. Yes, yes. And so it's me, you know. It's just me standing there. So then now they play on this TV, this leftist firebrand politician Julius Malema, doing chants of the song Killed a Boar,

which is the song that was created during the song, the apartheid era, which South African courts have said is not a literal call to violence, but was more so an anti-apartheid sort of a chant back then. That sounds pretty controversial and inflammatory.

Yeah, it's definitely is controversial. inflammatory, no doubt. So it's undoubtedly controversial, but we can say that the courts in South Africa has ruled that it is not a literal call to violence. And there's also sort of the fact that there has never been any sort of direct violence that has been associated with that song. Now, that said, again, like it's very controversial in many South Africans, you know, including those who are very much anti-apartheid and very much for the struggle and for black empowerment, would disavow that song. mood in the room, like, as that clip is playing, are people, how are people reacting to the fact

of the people? Yeah, so as it's playing, so as it started, President Ramaphosa, he leaned over to Trump to try to say something, like, no, no, like, this is. And then Trump literally, like, swatted his hand away and said, and pointed to the thing and said, no, watch, you know? And then the South African president, I was looking at him, and he was just like, he had kind of one of those, like, oh, my goodness, like this is going. Like, what can I do about this, you know?

So he definitely seemed exasperated with it, the South African president. Then you look, I was standing right across from those two golfers, Ernie Ells and Raitif Gousen. Ernie Els had his hands on his hips and he just like, oh, geez, you know, it just looked like he was just like, you know, he was just totally dejected. Gousen just had his hands in front of him. He was just looking down at the ground, you know, like, you know, just none of them, like, even looking at the video, they were just kind of staring away because it was a very awkward situation. Yeah.

Yeah, the entire South African delegation was just frankly very like, um, very aghast that this was playing. They were just trying to get through the, they're just trying to get through it. Exactly, exactly. We were trying to get through it. At one point, there's a member of the delegation. I made eye contact with him, someone I know.

And he kind of just like flipped his hands up, like, okay, what can we do, you know? So when the video ends, and presumably Trump turns up the lights, what happens? So then Trump had this stack of articles sitting next to him. He's printed out. articles.

What would you like President Ramaphosa to do about the situation? I don't know. And he starts raising them up and saying, like, see, these are all... These are articles over the last few days. Examples of Afrikaners who've been killed and, you know, of death that's happened. He took up, like, the articles. He held one up and he put it down. He said, death.

Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Horrible death. Death. Death. I don't know. But you know that. Pick anyone, white South Africans are fleeing because of the violence and racist laws. He's trying to insist that these were all articles about death and killing in South Africa,

when in actuality they were not. You know, like one of them was an article where the featured photo was actually in the Congo, in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, so it had nothing to do with South Africa. It wasn't even the same country. Exactly. It wasn't even the same country. And, you know, and then there were, apparently an article that I, wrote about Malema singing that killed a boar song was actually in that pile too. One of my articles was from two years ago.

All over this story. Yeah, exactly. There we go. Trump was citing your work. Yeah, yeah, there we go. So, yeah, he starts kind of carrying on about that. And then you have this kind of South African president is trying to say, no, no, no. And he's trying to interject.

But Trump is just carrying on with the narrative. He said, you're taking land. He said, farmers are being taken off their land. and then they're being killed, you know, and South African president is trying to say, no, no, we have a crime problem. But you do allow them to take land. No, no, no, no. You do allow them to take land. Nobody can't take land.

And then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them. No. There is quite, nothing happens to them. There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity. are not only white people. The majority of them are black people.

And we have now been utilized. The farmers are not black. The strategy of the South African government and the president coming into this meeting was to say, let's make it about everything except for this white genocide, right? We do not want it to be all about Afrikaners. We don't want it to be about farmers.

And so he kept trying to bring it back somehow to economics and to the business or the economic relationship between the two countries. So he's saying, no, we do have a crime problem. It affects everyone. Like, black people are, you know, disproportionately affected by violence in South Africa. And he was saying, this is why we need the help of the U.S. because we need your help to help our economy to get at the underlying drivers of crime, you know,

like the socioeconomic driver's crime. So Trump just completely sort of like took over that meeting and put the narrative on his terms, which at that moment seemed like a very bad thing for South Africa. Africa. There's also this wild moment in that meeting where President Ramaphosa jokingly apologized to Trump for not having a lavish gift for him. I'm sorry I don't have

a plane to give you. I wish you did. I would take it. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plan, I would take it. Okay. But coming back to this issue. You know, there's this jet, this plane that that the government has accepted from Qatar that is

supposed to be the next Air Force one and that will potentially be used by Trump after he leaves office. It was kind of a light moment amid this sort of tension around this question of genocide. Huh. So that video that President Trump showed in that meeting, like you said, it wasn't what he said it was. It wasn't where he said it was. And it didn't describe the crime he said it did. Yeah.

So when the video was playing the montage video of Julius Malema saying various incendiary things, There was one clip in which you could see it was sort of an overhead shot, almost like from a helicopter or a drone or something. Each one of those white things you see is a cross. It was of a South African highway in a rural area, and you could see cars parked along the side, and you could see crosses planted all along the side of the highway far into the distance.

And as it was playing, Cyril Ramaphosa, he was shocked. Have they told you where that is, Mr. President? No, I'd like to know where. It's also that these are burial sites. It's in South Africa. It turns out this was actually crosses planted by white activists who were trying to raise attention or bring awareness to what they say is the issue of murders of white people in rural communities.

So the crosses were symbolic, and Trump was saying that they're literal crosses marking where people's bodies were buried. Yes, exactly. They were symbolic crosses, and our New York Times video team, they were able to track down, you know, to verify the video was actually from a protest in 2020. After two white people had been killed on a farm, this sort of protests broke out. And these crosses were part of that protest. What we know from police statistics in South Africa is that of all the murders in South Africa, murders on farms, account for a very tiny percentage of the overall killings. And what we also do know is that of those killings on farms, more often than not, it's black people who are killed on farms.

So be it workers or, you know, people who live in settlements around farms. Even if you count the violence on farms, it's not targeting Afrikaners. And then the last element, I would say, what Afrikaners do argue, they say that the police statistics are an undercount, that they don't count all of the Afrikaners who are killed, that their definition of what's a rural crime and what's not is, is skewer. And so they will say, you know, like look at our numbers. There's been Afrikaner farm groups that have collected names and sort of data of their own saying, you know, there's been like 3,000 plus killings of farmers since the end of apartheid. Now, even if you were to count that as truth, right, when you look at genocides, I mean, if you look at what's happening in Sudan, like they're looking at 150,000 killings in the course of a year, you know, a year and a half, two years now. So, I mean, to put that in perspective, the scale of killings, you know, while obviously every killing is tragic and something that needs to be addressed, to say that it's on a scale of genocide is not supported by any evidence.

So Ramaposa is in this office with Trump, who is, you know, famous or infamous, depending on who you ask, for going off script. Like, Ramaposa is trying to keep the conversation on track in regards to trade deals and. economics. Like, what do we know? Can you give us a little background about who Ramaphosa is and how he became president of South Africa and how he found himself in this sort of surreal moment in American street now? Yes. So, Cyril Ramaphosa, he was actually, during the apartheid era, he was a trade union leader, essentially. And he, again, he, you know, black South African grew up in South Africa, was faced the same discrimination that other black South Africans faced, meaning his family. They were moved off of where they lived.

They were forced to live in a township, which are these sort of urban settlements that were disinvested places where black people were forced to live. So he rises through the ranks as a union leader. And then toward the end of apartheid in the early 90s, he was actually one of Nelson Mandela's trusted aides, and Mandela actually picked Ramaphosa to help lead the negotiations that ended apartheid.

And so that sort of started Ramaphosa on this trajectory where he would become known for sort of being a master negotiator per se. So it's like you had the art of the deal American president and the master negotiator who ended apartheid meeting in this Oval Office. When we come back. For people who are in Trump's orbit, South Africa is undoubtedly what they point to as the example of what we're. in their eyes will happen if DEI goes mad in America. If DEI is allowed to flourish in America. Stay with us. You're listening to the Code Switch from NPR.

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Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash NPRPod. Terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Granger. This is the story of the one. As a procurement manager for a hospital system, she keeps every facility in her network stocked and ready. That's why she counts on Granger to be her single source for a thousand. of products, from disinfectants to lighting, air filters, and more. And with fast, dependable delivery, Granger helps her keep every facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-Grangeer. Click Granger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air. No one voted for polluted water. That's why SCLC is fighting

to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on, just as they've done for 40 years. Because clean air, clean water, and a healthy climate aren't political. They're fundamental. Learn more at selc.org. Gene. Parker. Code Switch. So we've been talking to John Eligo, who covers Southern Africa for the New York Times, and he's been walking us through how this fringy conspiracy idea of white genocide in South Africa ended up being parroted by the president of the United States. In your own reporting, you've found that even though Trump has only started publicly talking about this white genocide story now,

he's been talking about it privately in the White House for years. And that's long before, you know, Elon Musk, you know, who of course is South African and grew up on apartheid and is sympathetic to this theory. That's long before he was a close confid on Trump's. So how did this conspiracy theory get on Trump's radar? Yeah, so I will say he's more vocal about it now, but his first sort of public mention of this idea of potential white genocide was actually in 2018 during his first term. And so here's what happened. So I did some reporting along with my colleague, Zolan Kayneau Young's and Erica Green, who cover the White House. We were able to find out that speaking to John Bolton, who was the national security advisor during Trump's first term, who was one of his national security advisors.

He told us that during a meeting in the situation room that had nothing to do with South Africa or Africa, it was some other issue they were talking about. In the middle of it, Trump just kind of stops and says, do you hear what's happening to the white farmers in South Africa? Like they're being killed, they're being persecuted and all this stuff. And he just kind of blurted that out in the middle of a meeting that had nothing to do with it. And when John Bolton told us was that Trump had mentioned that he had heard about this happening from Gary Player, who's another white South African golfer who Trump adores and is very close to Trump. Now, Gary Player has, he's kind of trying to distance himself from having said anything or suggesting that, you know,

that there's this Afrikaner persecution. But then it's sort of amplified when in 2018 there were Afrikaner lobby groups, right? And they've been active in terms of lobbying going all across the globe for years now to try and spread their message and and to further their cause, you know, one of them being that they're being persecuted in South Africa. Were they getting a lot of traction? So they were certainly getting a lot of attention from the right-wing folks around the globe.

And, you know, they came to the U.S. They met with, you know, some of the conservative think tanks. There were some politicians they met with, and then they met with Tucker Carlson. He had a show on Fox News at the time, and he's someone who's very close to Trump. Also peddles a lot of conspiracy theories. And some of these,

Africaner activists, they went on Tucker Carlson's show and they talked about, you know, these issues that they say Afrikaners and white people are facing in South Africa, this discrimination they say that they're facing. And sometime after that, in 2018, Tucker Carlson, he had a segment on his show in which he talked about land seizures happening in South Africa. We've got an exclusive investigation for you tonight. The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, has begun, and you may have seen this in the press, seizing land from his own citizens without compensation because they are the wrong skin color. That is literally the definition of racism. Very shortly after this piece aired, I think, like hours after the year, that's when Trump first publicly said something about the Afrikaner issue. He posted on what it was Twitter at the time, he posted a tweet saying that he was calling on Mike Pompeo, who's the Secretary of State of Time, to do an investigation into the mass killings and seizure of law.

land of white people in South Africa. And so that's sort of the genesis of where we see Trump publicly taking a stance on this. Hmm. So you've reported about the staggering inequality that still pervades South Africa, you know, three decades after the end of apartheid. South Africa's current tenuous political situation, its crime situation is shaped by that recent past. As far as you can tell, like, is this false genocide idea?

Is it a fringe position? among white South Africans? Yes, I would say overall it's a fringe position, yes. And I've looked at some surveys to this effect. I think a lot of white South Africans, and specifically Afrikaners, do believe that they do face some sort of discrimination and then some disadvantage. But to go to the degree of saying, like,

we're being killed in mass numbers, and the government's just taking away our land, those positions would be more contained to the fringe. And while there might be the sense of vulnerability among many Afrikaners, I think a lot of them still see South Africa as a place where they can have success, right? A lot of South Africans, you know, regardless of race, they buy into this idea of a rainbow nation, which is what South Africa called itself at the end of apartheid.

Like, we're this rainbow nation where we're going to be people of all, races, creeds, faith, living together and building a country together. This is not going to be a place where we're driving out white people because, you know, they were part of the apartheid regime. And, you know, Mandela was a very forgiving figure in that sense. And so you find a lot of Afrikaners today, they believe thoroughly in that. They believe very strongly in this idea of this Rainbow Nation and this idea that South Africa is a place for all.

and then that everyone is sort of equally sort of South African, right? I think it is definitely a French position to say that there is this genocide going on. But I think one thing I will say on that is that there are mainstream political groups that didn't go so far as to say that there was genocide, but they, in order to cater to some of the potential right-wing voters they could get, they sort of played up the idea of violence and farms and rural violence. And that helped to feed the larger narrative, even if they weren't saying directly that there's genocide. But I think that that helped to keep this narrative of white genocide going on.

It's not just the fringe conspiracy theorists who are doing it. It's even some, like, more mainstream politicians too. So you were talking about sort of the positioning of crime and just sort of like people, not necessarily going all the non-conspiracy theories, but like at least playing footsie with them because it was politically beneficial. And it seems like all of that eventually, like it helps feed into the idea that white folks in South Africa are under siege and therefore need refugee status. Yeah, exactly. There's that sense that white South Africans, you know, this narrative has been built up that they're treated unfairly.

But I still think, like, overall, like most South Africans realize that it's a place where apartheid and the legacy of it is still fresh in people's minds. Like most people there today had some living memory of it, right? So I think there's South Africans tend to understand that we need to do something to address these inequalities and these legacies that continue to exist. Because if we don't, we're going to continue to go around the same path where we essentially live in two societies. One that is a very developed and affluent world where we have big shopping malls and beautiful roads.

and people have nice cars, and one that for too many South Africans is one that is still stuck in struggle, in poverty, in unemployment, housing that's unstable. And so, yeah, so I think South Africans, they see bluntly the inequality that's before, and they know that they need to do something about it. So I think by and large, South Africans do not buy into this idea that white people now suddenly have it bad and then black people are just sailing by smoothly because you can't, you can't be in South African, honestly believe that because if you look around you, like, it's just, it's clear to see, like, where a lot of the struggle still lies.

You reported that black South Africans are responding to the furor over this idea of genocide with the mix of, as you put in, anger, disbelief and humor. So how are they expressing that? Black South Africans have always sort of used humor as a way to blunt the difficulties that they're going through. So you're seeing this show up on social media now, right? Whether that be people sort of acting like, you know, there's some apocalypse coming for white people and they're acting that out online. So that is definitely one way. The other way is they're just calling it out and saying like this is untrue.

I spoke to one very successful film producer in South Africa, Manvadoube. He has films that have been on Netflix and whatnot, but he also farms. And he was a victim of a farm attack. And he said, it's Afrikaners who live all around him on that farm, you know, where he farms. And he said, you know, so the idea that, like, white farmers are targeted and that they're the ones who are, you know, needing some sort of special treatment. He said it's basically insulting. Nobody, we didn't take this land from some poor Afrikanel. You know, it was purchased.

It was purchased. It's a family fund. So you're seeing sort of the range of emotions from black people from like, let's hit this head on with humor or just they're completely aghast and completely insulted by it at all. So that's sort of the response you're seeing from black people across the country. So if we go back to 2016, a lot of the polls, particularly from the interesting polls from the public religion research institute, found that when Trump first won the White House, a really big driver of his support, among white folks was among people who expressed this sense that they had lost some social status and were worried about white Americans becoming a minority here sometime over the next few decades. And the Trump administration seems to be using South Africa now as a kind of mirror to that anxiety

and maybe even like a magnifying glass for it and tying it to, for example, like the problems they see with DEI here in the United States. Can you talk about that connection for us? For people who are in Trump's orbit, South Africa is undoubtedly what they point to as the example of what in their eyes will happen if DEI goes mad in America. If DEI is allowed to flourish in America, then they say it's going to be South Africa. And that South Africa is one, as we've been talking about, where white people are under threat. They're being killed. They're having their land seas. They're being persecuted.

They're facing all these laws that are, like, trying to discriminate against them in terms of getting jobs, in terms of owning their land. And you just hear it all the time in these allies who are very close to Trump. So, like, there are certain, some of these conservative podcasters, I mean, I was watching a podcast between Charlie Kirk and Jack Pasebeek to, you know, very conservative people in Trump's orbits. they were talking explicitly about South Africa and how South African society is broken down. Like, you know, like we said there's high crime. There's a lot of service delivery issues, the power, you know. There's issues with electricity, with water supply and all these things. And they essentially equated that to DEI, essentially.

That's why the economy is struggling. That's why they can't keep the lights on. That's why the water supply is shaky. That's why, you know, crime is high. That's sort of the narrative that they were creating there. So, yeah, South Africa for them is sort of like the perfect example of what could happen in America. If America were to allow, you know, laws that go directly toward racial redress.

John Eligo is the Johannesburg-Georchief for the New York Times. he covers South Africa and countries in Southern Africa. Thank you so much, John. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me, Gene. We reached out to the White House for comment, and a spokesperson named Anna Kelly responded, it is shameful that the legacy media,

including taxpayer-funded NPR, continues to deny the horrific persecution of Afrikaners. White farmers are being raped, maimed, killed, and driven off their property across South Africa. President Trump will always work to deliver peace around the world. End quote. That's the White House's statement, but as John Eligo outlined in this episode, while there is a lot of violent crime in South Africa, most of the victims of that crime are black South Africans, not white Afrikaners. A South African minister said last month that six farmers were killed in South Africa between January and March, and five of those six farmers were black.

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is a great way to support our show in public media. And we get to listen to every episode sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash Code Switch. This episode was produced by Jess Kung and Christina Kala. It was edited by Courtney Stein. Our engineer was Jimmy Keely. And Parker, we will be remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the coats,

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