By Nellie Peyton and Bhargav Acharya
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -A local representative of an area shown in a video played at the White House said she was “sad” that U.S. President Donald Trump used the footage of hundreds of white crosses as false evidence of mass killings of white South African farmers.
Trump showed an aerial shot of a procession of cars moving along a road lined with white crosses during his meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, as he doubled down on false claims of a white genocide in South Africa. He said the crosses were “burial sites” for over 1,000 white farmers.
The shot, whose location and date were verified by Reuters, showed crosses that were actually placed along the road between the town of Newcastle and the rural community of Normandien in 2020 as a tribute to a farming couple who had been murdered, said Bebsie Cronje, a ward councillor for Newcastle, in KwaZulu-Natal province.
The crosses, installed to accompany a memorial service for the couple, have since been removed.
“The crosses was not a display of how many farm murders (took place) or whatever. It was just a total tribute to the Raffertys,” she told Reuters by telephone.
“I feel it’s very sad that something like this is being used politically.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
South Africa’s police minister Senzo Mchunu also said in a press briefing on Friday that the crosses were linked to the murder of the Rafferty couple. Three suspects were arrested and sentenced for their killing and are in jail, he said.
“They were sadly murdered by criminals in their home. The incident sparked a very strong protest by the farming community. The crosses symbolised killings on farms over years, they are not graves,” he said.
He added that claims of a “white genocide” in South Africa were “unfounded and unsubstantiated”, saying the country only recorded six farm murders in the first three months of 2025, which included one white person. A total of 5,727 murders took place over that period, down from 6,536 in the same period last year, figures from the police ministry showed.
“The history of farm murders in the country has always been distorted and reported in an unbalanced way. The truth is that farm murders have always included African people in more numbers.”
Cronje said the placing of the crosses was not politically motivated.
“There was a group that was very close to the Raffertys. And they organised the gathering and the travelling of everybody there,” said Cronje, referring to the long line of vehicles in the video.
She said that since then, another white farmer from Newcastle was murdered. But she did not feel that the crimes were linked to race.
“I can’t say that it’s just white people. If a black farmer is killed, it doesn’t come to the news,” said Cronje, who is from the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s second-biggest political party and a coalition partner of the African National Congress.
(Reporting by Nellie Peyton and Bhargav Acharya; additional reporting by Siyanda Mthethwa, editing by Silvia Aloisi and William Maclean)
