CNN Correspondent Debunks Trump’s Claims of White Genocide in South Africa: ‘A Good Day for White Nationalists’

Moments after President Donald Trump claimed there have been mass killings of White farmers in South Africa, a CNN international correspondent reporting from Africa delivered a thorough fact check.

Reporting from Kenya Wednesday, CNN international correspondent Larry Madowo explained that the confusion stems from a bill signed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in January — which allowed the government to seize unused farmland if it is deemed to be in the public interest. But according to Madowo — echoing a point Ramaphosa made to Trump in the Oval Office — no land has yet been seized through this law. President Trump’s position — that white farmers are being killed after land seizures — was likely to be celebrated by extremist groups, according to Madowo.

“This was a good day for white nationalists in South Africa,” Madowo said. “This was a good day for AfriForum — this is the white Afrikaner lobby group that’s considered a white nationalist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Because these were their talking points that President Trump has repeatedly said from the platform of the Oval Office. So they’ve gotten the best possible validation they could have imagined. Because the South African government, President Ramaphosa, has been trying to say this again and again and over the past few months, and is not being understood by the White House.”

Trump, in a video he played for President Ramaphosa, claimed to be showing a mass gravesite where “over a thousand” white South African farmers were buried. Madowo refuted this claim.

“After 15 years reporting in South Africa, I’ve found no evidence,” Madowo said. “We’ve looked at it again. South Africa does not release crime statistics by race, but they do release the number of farm murders. And we looked into it from April to December 2024. There were 36 farm murders, only seven of them were farmers. So the other 29 were likely other Black or colored workers in those farms. But none of that gets understood in this kind of heat of the moment.”

CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked Madowo about the song featured in the video put out by the White House — which showed South African far-left opposition leader Julius Malema leading a chant of “Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!” Madowo explained that President Ramaphosa decided not to enter into a coalition with Malema’s far-left bloc, but rather, opted to partner with a white-majority party. And Madowo noted that Ramaphosa brought with him to the White House prominent white South African officials such as Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen.

“I think that’s the point that Aramaposa tried to make there [by bringing Steenhuisen and other white officials],” Madowo said. “I have all these successful white people with me. They would not be here if there was a white genocide in our country.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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