JUSTICE MALALA | Trump’s ‘white genocide’ lies are a tool of war that borders on insanity

Last Wednesday US President Donald Trump announced that South Africa would be barred from attending the next G20 summit in Miami in 2026.

It is an extraordinary yet predictably irrational decision from the Trump administration. A single member of a 20-member organisation unilaterally declared that it would ― without consultation with any other member country or organisation such as France, the UK, the EU, and others ― be sole judge and jury of who gets invited to the top table.

Many of you will have seen the incendiary Truth Social post in which Trump wrote: “The United States did not attend the G20 in South Africa because the South African government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific human rights abuses endured by Afrikaners and other descendants of Dutch, French and German settlers.

“To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them …”

Read this line again: “They are killing white people.”

This is a downright lie. It is a lie that has been aired by the president of the most powerful country in the world many times this year. Every time he has aired it tons of researchers have rushed to debunk it. Even his ardent supporters in South Africa, the organisations AfriForum and Solidarity, threaten legal action against reporters who ascribe such an assertion to them.

This “white genocide” lie that Trump has used, this “they are killing white people” lie that he makes in last week’s social media post, is possibly the most dangerous and damaging of all the actions he has taken against South Africa. It is not just a lie; it is a tool of war: it is deliberate disinformation and misinformation.

Trump said South Africa “is a mess” back in 2015. He claimed there was a white genocide in 2018. And now, in 2025, he recycles this lie every few weeks. At his worst, he invited President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House in May and showed pictures of a murder scene in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while claiming it happened in South Africa.

That is how debased, how insane, how infuriating, this entire “diplomatic battle” between South Africa and the Trump administration is: it is based on a farrago of lies culled from faceless internet sources whose sole aim is to cause damage to South Africa.

Shouting back against Donald Trump’s and his supporters’ lies at government level has clearly not worked. You cannot convince a cult to stop doing what it does ― follow a leader blindly over the cliff. 

Even the US state department’s overview of South Africa’s economy released in September made no mention of “white genocide” claims. The 2025 Investment Climate Statements: South Africa flagged real problems in South Africa such as uncertainty created by land expropriation laws and other race-based laws, saying these were making it difficult for US companies operating in the country. It also cautioned about South Africa’s competition regime, saying international and domestic investors have raised concerns that the Competition Commission has taken an increasingly social-activist approach by prioritising public interest criteria over other more traditional antitrust and monopoly criteria.

You would think the state department would be telling American investors that they would be “slaughtered” (to use Trump’s word from another social media post before the successful G20 summit two weeks ago), but not a word about that fantasy. That’s because there isn’t any such thing.

Trump’s dogged attachment to this non-existent “white genocide” borders on lunacy. It also clearly demonstrates that no amount of rational appeal to “common sense”, something that is out of the window in this administration, will work.

South Africa therefore needs to take urgent steps to:

• beef up its diplomatic presence in the US, where it has substantial support and goodwill, to keep its allies briefed and energised that it is a partner in the best interests of America and its people;
• appoint an ambassador urgently to the US;
• step up its presence in alternative markets such as the EU, China and others. This goes beyond mere rhetoric, but there needs to be evidence of better funding, more merit appointments (not tired ANC cadres), and actual programmes being implemented;
• push back against the “white genocide” narrative at home and abroad;
• crucially, accelerate economic reforms in this country, fight corruption and build the country we have always envisioned;
• act on the understanding that mid-term elections are scheduled for November 3 2026 in the US. After two years of dominating the Senate and the House of Representatives, Trump may have his power curtailed if both chambers are flipped and the Democrats can begin to rein in some of his reckless actions.  

Shouting back against Donald Trump’s and his supporters’ lies at government level has clearly not worked. You cannot convince a cult to stop doing what it does ― follow a leader blindly over the cliff.

You can, however, espouse a vision and build a country whose mere existence is a powerful argument against the cult’s destructive and false teachings.

That is what South Africa can do and should do now, urgently, before the lies and misinformation begins to sound true to the rest of the world.