The human rights situation in South Africa has “significantly worsened,” leading to further abuses of minorities — an issue President Donald Trump has raised — Breitbart News has learned.
“The human rights situation in South Africa significantly worsened during the year; with the signing of Expropriation Bill (B23-2020) on December 20, South Africa took a substantially worrying step towards land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities in the country,” the South Africa 2024 Human Rights Report (SAHRC), first reviewed by Breitbart News, reveals.
There are credible reports of what the report describes as “arbitrary or unlawful killings; arbitrary arrest or detention; and the repression of racial minorities,” revealing that the government took no credible steps to “investigate, prosecute, and punish officials who committed human rights abuses, including inflammatory racial rhetoric against Afrikaners and other racial minorities, or violence against racial minorities.”
The report listed several examples of the South African government itself committing these “arbitrary or unlawful killings.” It cited data compiled by Agence France-Presse (AFP), pointing to 447 murders on farms and smallholdings in almost a year’s time:
The SAHRC reported that on August 30, two Black women, ages 45 and 35, were shot and killed at a farm in Limpopo. According to the SAHRC, a swineherd and two employees were arrested and appeared in court on charges of killing the women. The victims were allegedly shot and killed and their remains fed to the swineherd’s pigs.
In recent years, extremist political party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) encouraged attacks on Afrikaner farmers, reviving the use of the song “Kill the Boer” at its rallies and otherwise inciting violence.
President Donald Trump has raised this issue, perhaps most publicly in May during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. At one point, Ramaphosa protested claims of “genocide,” and Trump responded by turning on a video, as Breitbart News detailed:
The video showed radical leader Julius Malema and other black political figures addressing rallies, chanting slogans such as “Kill the farmer!” and “Shoot to kill!” The video also showed threats to seize white-owned farmland, and a large memorial to murdered farmers featuring over a thousand crosses along a roadside.
Ramaphosa had begun by avoiding the issue, saying instead that he wanted to focus on trade, investment, and efforts to promote peace around the world. It was the South African journalists in the room who demanded that Trump answer for his claims about “genocide” and his refugee policy for white Afrikaners.
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Ramaphosa tried to argue that the leaders depicted in the video represented small opposition parties. [Minister of Agriculture John] Steenhuisen added that the DA [Democratic Alliance party] had joined the ANC precisely to keep those parties out of the government.
Trump noted that those parties were large enough to fill large stadiums with their supporters, and asked why Julius Malema in particular, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), had not been arrested.
The report hits several other facets, including a sore lack of true freedom of the press, with officials restricting reporting on topics such as prisons. Many journalists, the report continues, were “subjected to violence, harassment, or intimidation by authorities or political party representatives due to their reporting.”
All of this comes as Ramaphosa has continued to claim that White South Africans — members of the Afrikaner, or Boer, minority group — do not face racial discrimination or persecution by the South African government, which is false.
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