WATCH: State Dept Asked for Evidence of ‘Genocide’ Against White South Africans

U.S. President Donald Trump recently said that a “genocide” is taking place against white Afrikaner farmers in South Africa—a claim which has been widely (and often strongly) disputed, including by Human Rights Watch, Geoff Hill, Andile Zulu, Pauline Bax, and many white South Africans and/or Afrikaners, such as journalism professor Herman Wasserman, farmer Theo de Jager, minister of agriculture John Steenhuisen, activist Ulrich Janse van Vuuren, unionist Jaco Kleynhans, and author Max du Preez.

Trump has nevertheless signed an executive order cutting off “aid [and] assistance” to South Africa and decreeing that U.S. “shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees,” which his State Department and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have since implemented.

While Trump’s executive order accuses South Africa of “rights violations” and other alleged injustices, it also explicitly lays out what is likely one of Trump’s actual, primary motives. Among his list of grievances:

“…South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice.”

At last Thursday’s State Department press briefing, deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott was asked to provide evidence that a “genocide” is taking place against white South African farmers, and about whether the State Department is conducting a formal genocide investigation.

He repeatedly dodged these and other related questions, robotically reciting the same talking point over and over:

“There were harrowing stories that they told…”

“Fundamentally what we have seen are harrowing stories…”

“We have heard harrowing stories here…”

“The stories that we have heard are harrowing…”

Watch:

Commenting on this video, journalist

Sam Husseini

wrote that the Trump administration is “quite clearly going to town on this South African ‘genocide’ line” for several reasons:

• Punish South Africa for going to the ICJ regarding the actual genocide in Gaza

• Make it seem like they are standing up for alleged oppressed white folks, plays to some white working class voters who don’t perceive that it’s actually — again — for Israel (similar to how they repackaged Palestine / protests as an immigration issue)

• Push back against BRICS to the extent it’s challenging US establishment dominance

We would add that it also cheapens the word “genocide,” as the Trump administration helps carry one out with their partners in Israel.

On Saturday, Secretary Rubio himself was asked the same basic questions on Face The Nation. Like Pigott, he dodged the question about a formal genocide investigation and failed to provide evidence that what is happening in South Africa is a “genocide”:

Q: President Trump claims there’s a genocide underway in South Africa. That’s a legal determination; the State Department would make it. Are you trying to determine that now?

RUBIO: I would determine that these people are having their properties taken from them. You can– they can call it whatever they want. But these are people that, on the basis of their race, are having their properties taken away from them, and their lives being threatened, and in some cases killed. . . .

Q: Is there evidence of a genocide that you have?

RUBIO: I think there’s evidence, absolutely, that people have been murdered; that people have been forcibly removed from their properties. . . .

‘This collapse is by design’

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is still ongoing, but the International Court of Justice (ICJ) recently granted Israel an almost six month extension to file their counter-memorial. The deadline was originally July 28, 2025, but it has now been pushed back January 12, 2026.

Just a few weeks ago, on April 29, South Africa participated in a separate public hearing before the ICJ, in which they warned (p. 8) that Gaza is “once again under a complete siege following Israel’s breach of the ceasefire brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.”

“Palestinian NGOs and major aid groups have warned that Gaza is entering into famine, and that, in their words, ‘the humanitarian aid system is facing total collapse,’ ” said South Africa’s representative Zane Dangor.

“This collapse is by design,” he added, noting that “Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said on [April 16], ‘Israel’s policy is clear ⎯ no humanitarian aid is about to enter Gaza . . . there are no preparations to enable such aid.’”

“Israel has also intensified its aggression against Palestinians in the West Bank,” Dangor said. “Israel is blocking food, water and medicines ⎯ all of which are essential to life ⎯ from entering Gaza.”

“Under the world’s watchful eye, Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories are being subjected to atrocity crimes, persecution, apartheid and genocide,” he said. “While we watch, the gaze of Palestinians is directed squarely at the international community, and this Court ⎯ whose advice is urgently being sought, for the protection of their most fundamental rights, including the right to life.

Dangor concluded:

The international community cannot accept a reality in which an entire civilian population is deliberately starved by Israel; where the United Nations is evicted and deprived of its immunities and privileges; where third States and humanitarian organizations are prevented from rendering humanitarian assistance in solidarity, and in fulfillment of their erga omnes obligations. Nor can we accept that journalists, aid workers and first responders are being assassinated, and then hastily buried in mass graves. The United Nations is rightfully seized of this matter and calls for the Court’s urgent advice on the questions put to it by the General Assembly.

A short while later, another representative of South Africa, Jaymion Hendricks, implored the United Nations and its agencies to “continue to render humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people” and “demand and negotiate for the removal of barriers imposed by Israel,” noting that “international law prohibits Israel from the use of starvation as a method of warfare.“

“Third states,” meanwhile, have “an obligation not to recognize as lawful Israel’s internationally wrongful acts, including its banning of UNRWA, not to maintain these acts and to collaborate to bring such acts to an end,” Hendricks said, adding that it is “imperative” for them to “refrain from providing arms which enable Israel’s continued breaches of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Hendricks concluded:

South Africa shares the U.N. Secretary-General’s view, that the “world has failed” the Palestinian people—“the only certainty they have is that tomorrow will be worse.” Therefore, we must “save whatever is left of our humanity,” by ending Israel’s unlawful settler colonial occupation and its intentional starving of the Palestinian population, who are being systematically brutalized and deprived of the most elementary considerations of humanity. Palestinians look to the world, and to this Court, for an end to their enduring loss, their pain and their suffering.

Timeline of Events

To get a better sense of the chronology here, and when the Trump administration’s statements and actions regarding this alleged “genocide” of white South Africans took place relative to various other events related to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, we put together the following abridged timeline…..

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