In an unusual statement, South Africa’s chief rabbi on Sunday sided with U.S. President Donald Trump, defending his criticism of Pretoria in connection with allegations of anti-white racism involving deadly violence and hate speech.
“President Trump was right to highlight the moral aberration of the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant and the horrific farm murders,” Rabbi Warren Goldstein said in a video message. He added that Trump “is wrong that this is only a white genocide, it is a South African genocide.”
Goldstein referenced South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House on Thursday, when he met with Trump in the Oval Office. A journalist asked Trump “what it would take” for him to reject claims of a “white genocide” in South Africa.
Ramaphosa said he would answer the question for Trump, saying that the American leader would need to “listen to the voices of South Africans” on the issue. Trump noted that thousands of accounts have accumulated, adding, “I could show you. It has to be responded to,” before asking an aide to dim the lights.
A montage was shown on a screen, including footage of tens of thousands of people cheering in a stadium as Julius Malema, a leader of the anti-white Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, chant “Kill the Boer.”
Boer is a word in Afrikaans and Dutch that means “farmer.” It is used to identify the Afrikaner nation, a minority of about two million people whose ancestors came to South Africa centuries ago from the Netherlands, France and Germany. The Afrikaners were the dominant political force in South Africa during apartheid.
In 2022 and 2023, almost 100 people were murdered in 635 so-called farm attacks—the term used for raids on white-owned farms by black perpetrators—according to data compiled by the AfriForum watchdog. Many farm attacks—which often feature rape, torture and extreme violence—combine racial animosity and theft.
Earlier this month, the United States admitted dozens of Afrikaner refugees from South Africa. Some 70,000 have applied for refugee status in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of State.
Land seizure law
Ramaphosa, who shifted in his seat during the projection, responded by saying the videos do “not represent government policy,” to which Trump responded: “But you do allow them to take land.” This was a reference to the newly passed land seizure law in South Africa, which Ramaphosa signed and that allows land seizures by the state without compensation—a move widely seen as directed at white people, who own most privately owned land.
Ramaphosa protested, saying, “No, no, no,” but Trump continued, “And then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And then nothing happens to them [the killers].”
He added, “A lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa. … we have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they are coming to the U.S., so we take from many locations if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on.”
Tens of thousands of Afrikaners and other non-blacks, including thousands of Jews, have left South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994. The country has seen a steady decline in quality of life, personal safety and infrastructure.
Goldstein said, “The White House meeting between President Ramaphosa and President Trump in full glare of the media served to highlight the appalling failures of South Africa’s ruling elite.” The rabbi has rarely attacked the government so publicly and harshly.
“The moment when Mr. Trump played Julius Malema chanting … was particularly devastating,” Goldstein added. “Every decent human being in the world watching this knows instinctively that ‘Kill the Boer,’ ‘Kill the Farmer’ is hate speech and criminal incitement to violence,” he said, “except President Ramaphosa, who has never publicly condemned the chant as hate speech, not even in the Oval Office when he had every opportunity and motive to do so.”
Goldstein also noted that the judges of South Africa’s Constitutional Court on March 27 unanimously ruled that the chant was neither hate speech nor incitement to violence.
“This judgment casts a shadow on the integrity and legacy of the constitutional court and makes a mockery of their role as the guardians of human rights in South Africa,” Goldstein said.
Citing South Africa’s elevated murder rate (45 per 100,000 in 2023/24, more than eight times that of the United States), Goldstein said that Ramaphosa “and his government “do not care, to them white lives don’t matter and black lives don’t matter, South Africans have given up hope of the government protecting them.”