'This is what Elon wanted'

Trump's lie-laden meeting with South African president was about enriching Musk and further demonizing people of color

By Sam Bellamy

The Trump team has never been known for truth or accuracy, but the gang that couldn’t think straight really outdid itself prepping our stable genius for a televised meeting with the president of South Africa last week.

Trump blindsided President Cyril Ramaphosa with a video alleging that his government is ignoring – or endorsing – a campaign of genocide against white farmers. Afterward, he presented a stack of printouts of news articles and blog posts that supposedly provided further proof.

True to brand for the Trump administration, the video was filled with lies and at least some of printouts he highlighted for Ramaphosa actually had nothing to do with South Africa.

Elon Musk stood nearby, watching approvingly as Trump launched the attack. The South African native had previously shared the video at least twice on his social media cesspool, X. “This is what Elon wanted,” Trump explained at one point during the meeting.

Musk has been trying for years to establish his Starlink service in South Africa but has been blocked by laws requiring substantial local ownership of companies before admission into the country. Rather than work to meet those requirements, Musk spreads lies about the country and accuses its leadership of discriminating against and even killing white people.

Musk appears to have a deep interest in expanding his satellite service across all of Africa. ProPublica and others have reported on repeated efforts by the State Department to pressure officials in Gambia and elsewhere on the continent to award licenses to Musk’s company.

Expanded satellite service across Africa would aid education and economic development, but Musk’s Starlink isn’t the only such service and – it used to go without saying – the U.S. government has no business shilling for a specific American company and certainly not one whose owner showered millions on Trump’s presidential campaign.

A segment of the video shown in the Oval Office featured a procession of cars moving slowly past a long row of crosses beside a rural road. "Now this is very bad, those are burial sites right there. Burial sites. Over a thousand. Of white farmers," Trump said, "I've never seen anything like it."

Ramaphosa, clearly puzzled, asked where these crosses were because he’d never seen them before. Trump, of course, didn’t know. “I mean, it’s in South Africa,” he responded.

Reuters and other news outlets quickly determined that the crosses didn’t mark burial sites or signify the murders of “over a thousand” white farmers. It was a memorial to a couple, Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were brutally slain by robbers in 2020 at their farm in KwaZulu-Natal province

One of their sons, Nathan Rafferty, told NPR from his home in Australia that the memorial was intended to draw attention to his parents’ murder and protest the widespread violence in South Africa. He said it was disturbing to see Trump use the video now.

"Do I think that there's a targeted genocide program of some sort?" he said. "No, I don't."

Despite claims by Trump and Musk, there is no specific or organized targeting of white farmers, although – as Ramaphosa and his aides freely admitted at the White House – there is a runaway crime problem that South Africa is struggling to combat.

More than 26,000 people were murdered in South Africa last year, but the vast majority of the victims were black. Last year, a group representing farmers tallied 23 murders involving white farmers and nine involving black farmers, based on news reports, social media posts and information from farmers. From January to March 2025, South African officials report, six people were killed on farms in South Africa. One of the victims was white.

Ramaphosa politely tried to turn the conversation toward a productive end, saying that his country could really use help from the United States in deploying more technology to fight crime. Trump didn’t respond to that suggestion.

Trump did, however, show a printout of a blog post that supposedly showed white farmers being buried in South Africa. News agencies quickly determined what Trump’s staff couldn’t be bothered to look up (or didn’t care to learn) – the photos were taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, not South Africa.

The video also focused on an extremist South African politician leading a chant to “kill the Boer,” an anti-apartheid rallying cry that the ruling African National Congress has distanced itself from for more than 30 years. The footage itself was more than a decade old, and the politician has never held a government position.

Ramaphosa said the government doesn’t endorse that view and that political groups across the spectrum in South Africa are united in isolating politicians who do. Equating those extremists with responsible leadership – as Trump and Musk do – doesn’t help.

After the Oval Office meeting, BBC traveled to the region where the long row of crosses had been installed as a temporary memorial. Among those interviewed was Roland Collyer, the nephew of the slain Raffertys.

Collyer said he believed the crosses did represent slain farmers but that they definitely weren’t burial sites. He said Trump was prone to exaggeration but that he appreciated the attention he was drawing to South Africa and its crime problem.

Despite its trouble, Collyer said he is optimistic. "I think if we can just join hands, and I think there's more than enough people in this country - black and white - who are willing to join hands and to try to make this country a success."

Sadly, Trump and Musk aren’t less interested in making that happen than they are in securing Musk’s ability to expand Starlink service in South Africa and across the continent. And, of course, portraying people of color as a threat to white Americans.