Journal De Malte - S.Africa minister rejects 'genocide' claim with statistics

The genocide conspiracy is "totally unfounded and totally unsubstantiated", Senzo Mchunu said, rejecting claims by Trump who again charged at talks with President Cyril Ramaphosa Wednesday that "thousands" of white farmers were being killed.

"The history of murders in the country has always been distorted and reported in an unbalanced way," Mchunu told reporters.

"The truth is that farm murders have always included African people and in more numbers."

Presenting the quarterly crime statistics, he said that two farm owners were murdered between January and March 2025 and both of them were black.

One farm dweller, two farm employees and one farm manager also lost their lives in attacks on farms over the quarter. Only the farm dweller was white, Mchunu said.

"We don't deny that the levels of crime in the country are high," he said, but it "cuts across all divides, rural and urban areas".

Twelve murders on farms were recorded in the previous quarter, from October to December 2024, of which only one victim -- a farm owner -- was white, the minister said.

At Wednesday's talks in the Oval Office, Trump showed a video and articles purporting to support his claims of "persecution" and which AFP found contained many falsehoods.

Ties between the two nations have nosedived since Trump took office in January, with the US leader cutting aid, expelling the South African ambassador and offering "refuge" to South African whites fleeing "persecution".

- No land grabs -

The minister said police figures did not usually categorise crimes by race but had made this distinction for farm murders "in the context of claims of genocide of white people".

To "show a fuller picture", the police would include new categories in their statistics to distinguish between killings in rural areas, urban environments and on commercial farms, he said.

The minister also rejected claims repeated by Trump that the government was expropriating land held by white farmers.

The police had recorded a few cases of "unlawful" land invasion -- most in urban areas -- but there were no government-sanctioned land grabs, he said.

"It is an unsubstantiated allegation, and it remains so, even though it is said by people who are in high positions," he said.

The statistics for the January-March quarter showed a 12-percent drop in the number of murders compared to the same period last year, with 5,727 people killed.

This averages about 63 murders per day, whereas police figures for the 2023/24 financial year showed just over 75 killings a day. Most victims of crime are young, black men in urban areas.

The numbers released Friday also showed a slight increase in reported cases of rape to almost 10,700 in three months, Mchunu said.

A.Camilleri--JdM