Trump’s blind spots about SA threaten to whitewash realities — like entrenched gang violence

Whataboutisms can come across as an easy or even lazy way to argue – or detract from – a point.

Some residents don’t have access to water. But what about those without electricity?

Jacob Zuma is accused of corruption. But what about Cyril Ramaphosa, why are you picking on Zuma?

You catch the drift.

US touchdown

On Monday, 12 May 2025, the US welcomed a group of 59 Afrikaners from South Africa – self-styled refugees.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau had warm words for them and cold words for the South African authorities.

Read more: AfriForum’s Kallie Kriel — there are land grabs in SA, not major land confiscations

“They tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they faced in South Africa that was not redressed by the authorities, by the unjust application of the law…

“This is a group that has… experienced violence and really fear for their lives in South Africa,” he said.

“They were really subject to very serious, egregious and targeted threats, and we wish them well in their journey in the United States.”

During a question-and-answer session with reporters, Landau had also said: “These people have been living under a shadow of violence and terror for some time now.”

Trump’s ‘genocide’ narrative

The SA-to-US trek was, of course, a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order from February 2025, which cut off aid to South Africa and offered refuge to “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination”.

In a video posted to the White House’s YouTube account on 12 May, the day the group of Afrikaners touched down in the US, Trump dug in about South Africa.

Read more: ‘We must be clear there’s no white genocide in SA,’ frustrated MPs urge

He told reporters: “It’s a genocide that’s taking place and you people don’t want to write about it… Farmers are being killed, they happen to be white.

“Whether they’re white or black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”

Trump characteristically did not provide facts, or supporting material, to back up his words.

The proof of what he professes would be in a death toll, so let’s look at some numbers.

The official numbers

According to the South African Police Service’s official crime statistics covering the last three months of last year – October to December 2024 – there were 6,953 murders in the country.

Read more: ‘Our lives will never be the same’ – Gruesome pig farm murders shatter families and Limpopo community

Of those, 294 were gang-related, with most of those killings (263) recorded in the Western Cape. (If we strip the emotion from all of this, and look at the numbers, this is about four times the number of Afrikaners who took up the US on its “refugee” offer.)

Police are clearly grappling to get the situation under control and in some cases officers are suspected of working with gangsters – this, in a sense, could also fit under what Landau described as “the unjust application of the law”.

Back to the numbers.

Over the same three months in which the 294 gang killings were recorded, there were 12 “farming community” (this is the police’s terminology) murders in South Africa.

One of the 12 killed was a farmer.

Among the others, five individuals had dwellings on farm property, four were farm workers and one was a security officer, while one was listed as “not specified”.

Afrikaner interest group AfriForum previously countered that this figure was higher, but in March 2025 the police said: “Preliminary findings indicate that… only one murder of a farm owner is reflected.”

Read more: State Security Agency vows to push for prosecution of anyone threatening SA’s democracy

And on Tuesday, 13 May 2025, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told Parliament that the statistics “were correct and accurate as demonstrated to AfriForum”.

She added: “We are winning the fight against farm murders.”

Now, every life lost – every murder – is indeed harrowing.

The police statistics indicate, though, that there is no genocide of farmers who “happen to be white”, as Trump has basically told the world.

Gang murders

In terms of gang murders, there is clearly a problem in the Western Cape, which has long been known as South Africa’s gangsterism capital because of related violence.

People who live in violent hotspots have labelled this bloodshed a genocide.

Among the gang murder statistics are children, and who knows, had they had a chance to live they could have become doctors, teachers and farmers.

Read more: Cape Town shootings — ‘unimaginable sadness’ as boy, 4, murdered two years after sister killed

This is where there is tragic irony.

To recap, Trump said on 12 May: “Whether they’re white or black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”

The norm – ‘bullet-ridden bodies’

In terms of gangsterism, different gang strongholds have developed in suburbs that, under the apartheid government, were designated for black and brown residents.

Those darker-skinned residents were forced from other areas – their land was in effect confiscated – to those poorly resourced suburbs.

Those murdered or maimed in gang shootings are – and remain so today – mostly darker residents in apartheid-produced suburbs.

Different types of decades-old traumas are entrenched in these areas and are being passed from one generation to the next.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGJQ2DYAgjw

A Supreme Court of Appeal judgment from 2022 sums up the situation: “Gang violence has long been rife in the areas on the outskirts of Cape Town, commonly known as the Cape Flats.

“Gangs have their roots in the apartheid forced removals where communities were moved from their old neighbourhoods, in or near the city centre, to the wastelands which make up the Cape Flats.

“Gang violence continues today, unabated, making everyday life a hazardous business for the residents of those areas. Shootings and bullet-ridden bodies have become a daily occurrence in the gang-ravaged areas.”

It is important to keep in mind that foot soldiers, individuals low down in gang hierarchy, live in these historic gang strongholds.

Their bosses – organised crime masterminds – often live in affluent areas where more white people reside, away from the constant violence.

And these bosses may have vastly different backgrounds and appearances to foot soldiers.

A different scenario

Let’s apply whataboutism, to broaden the perspective.

The US is welcoming Afrikaners seeking refuge there.

Its embassy here says the requirements for South African citizens to be considered for resettlement there include that one must be “of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa”. 

One must also “be able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution”.

So, what about other South Africans who must deal with realities, including ceaseless gang violence playing out on their doorsteps?

Imagine if Trump flung open the US’s doors and dished out balloons and little US flags to them. (The flags, mind you, could be triggering, because there is a gang in the Western Cape known as the Americans and it uses the US flag as a symbol.)

Those landing on US soil would probably look different – likely to have various shades of darker skin – compared with the white group that touched down on Monday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJdf67PwmS8

Of the Afrikaner group, Landau had said several were “farmers who’ve farmed this particular land for generations and now face the threat not only of expropriation but also of direct violence”.

Well, if a group of South African gang violence survivors landed in the US as refugees, they would not arrive with generational land. 

They’d arrive with generational trauma intensified through their, or their families’, forced removals of decades ago, simply because they were not white.

This alternative version of events would undoubtedly highlight an ugly issue that South Africa may not want globally publicised – that gang violence is constantly ending lives.

And that some residents (often those with brown or black skin who do not come from moneyed farming families) are affected more than others (often those with white skin and historically better finances).

This version of events, which amplifies apartheid scars, would turn global attention to a very real problem playing out not just in Cape Town, but across South Africa, and this could cause an international outcry and perhaps produce solutions or force some into being.

This could save lives.

The focus here on gang violence in the Western Cape can be shifted onto various other terrible situations around the world in which certain people are, and have long been, targeted or suppressed.

What Trump is doing, though, threatens to whitewash these realities, including gang violence in this country.

He and his administration detract from several overt global crises.

The flipside of trying to legitimise a nonexistent genocide is illegitimising very real masses of murder.

US refugee programmes

On 12 May, at the press briefing linked to the Afrikaners from South Africa who had landed in the US, a journalist posed a whataboutism to Landau.

The journalist said there were many people fleeing persecution.

That journalist added: “Afghans, for example, and they live in a country run by the Taliban. But they’re being denied refugee status. 

“So, I’m wondering why has such an exception been made for the Afrikaners, especially when the South African government says they’re not in danger. And are you going to open up the refugee resettlement programme for others?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_f79hIW1po

In response, Landau explained that on Trump’s first day in office, 20 January 2025, an executive order was issued.

It had paused US refugee programmes that, according to Landau, “had been going at record levels under the prior administration and had brought in people that we were not sure had been carefully vetted for national security issues”.

He added: “And whether or not the broader refugee programmes for other people around the world will be lifted is still an ongoing consideration.”

The ‘shadow of violence and terror’

So, just imagine if representatives of South African residents who are familiar with the sound of bullets ejecting from gangster-fired guns, made their way to the US and whispered in the ears of those close to Trump about what they must try to survive back home.

Imagine they went on international roadshows highlighting their plight, speaking about how children, sometimes even babies still in the womb, are losing family through killings and being robbed of the opportunity to grow up.

Imagine they vocalised fine layers of trauma that have built up into a dense bedrock of grief and distress.

Just imagine another country decided to grant these residents refugee status.

It’s not the most outrageous thing.

The words Landau used to describe the Afrikaners who recently landed in the US are perfectly applicable to those trying to survive in the thick of gang ructions in South Africa and in strife zones around the world.

“These people have been living under a shadow of violence and terror for some time now.” DM