China’s government-run Global Times propaganda newspaper defended the government of South Africa in its coverage of President Cyril Ramaphosa visiting the White House on Thursday, claiming President Donald Trump’s evidence of normalized genocidal sentiment against white people in the country was a “conspiracy theory.”
The Global Times cited the flagship state-run Xinhua News Agency and several Western outlets that dismissed a video compiled by the White House of radical leftist groups in South Africa, most prominently the leader of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters Julius Malema, chanting “kill the farmer” and using other genocidal language. While South Africa has one of the world’s most progressive constitutions and a robust legal framework against “hate speech,” it has chosen not to act to outlaw calls for killing the white farmer population and others in the Afrikaner ethnic group.
South Africa has been run by the Marxist African National Congress (ANC) for over three decades, which has brought the country’s foreign policy closely into alignment with communist regimes around the world. South Africa is formally allied with China through its membership in BRICS, the anti-American economic and security organization that also includes Brazil, Russia, and India, among other secondary members.
WATCH: President Trump Shames South African President to His Face for Persecution of White Farmers
The Communist Party of China defended South Africa from accusations of allowing calls for the genocide of white people while being home to the world’s largest currently active genocide. Since at least 2017, dictator Xi Jinping has waged a campaign of extermination against the indigenous Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz population of occupied East Turkistan, sending as many as 3 million to concentration camps, forcibly sterilizing tens of thousands of people, and tearing children from their families to prevent them from learning their culture.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry notably abstained from commenting on Ramaphosa’s meeting with President Trump on Wednesday, according to the Chinese government’s official transcript of its daily briefing on Thursday. The Global Times, however, accused President Trump of propagating “conspiracy theories” by showing actual video footage of crowds shouting genocidal chants in the country.
“Of the laundry list of conspiracy theories brought out at Trump’s meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa today, almost everything has been debunked,” the Times claimed, referring to video evidence. The Chinese state outlet did not offer evidence of the “debunking,” stating only that “news outlets were shocked by Trump’s rudeness.”
“Ramaphosa tried to rebuff the assertions but was frequently interrupted by Trump, who repeated the claims,” the Times narrated, before admitting that Ramaphosa signed a sweeping socialist land-grab law, the Expropriation Act, that disproportionately hurts white South Africans.
The Global Times did not share the video evidence that it claimed was “debunked.”
🚨 JUST SHOWN IN THE OVAL OFFICE: Proof of Persecution in South Africa. pic.twitter.com/rER1l8sqAU
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 21, 2025
Following both the public and private sectors of his meetings with Trump, Ramaphosa claimed that the objective of his visit was to reach “a really good trade deal” with the United States and claimed that his private conversations with the American president revolved largely around gold.
“Following that engagement which you all witnessed, we retired to what I think they call the Cabinet room, where we were able to have really good in-depth exchanges with President Trump and his other officials,” Ramaphosa claimed. “The discussion revolved, of course, around golf, but they also revolved around issues of trade and investment.”
While Ramaphosa denied the evidence in the video, its star, EFF leader Julius Malema, reiterated in a statement on social media that he supports state theft of land, a policy that disproportionately affects white South Africans.
A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me. No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about white genocide. We will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency.
— Julius Sello Malema (@Julius_S_Malema) May 21, 2025
The EFF issued an official statement in defense of calls to “kill the farmer,” calling the death threat part of South Africa’s cultural heritage.
“Donald Trump in his illiterate rants has called for his [Malema’s] arrest for daring to call for land expropriation without compensation,” the EFF said. “As a result, the EFF is concerned by this call that something must be done to stop the EFF President from chanting a liberation heritage song,” referring to “Kill the Farmer.”
The statement ended with the phrase “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer! Victory is Certain!”
Boer is a term used for white South Africans of Dutch descent. South Africa’s court system has ruled that calling to kill South Africans of Dutch descent is not “hate speech.”
South Africa, a nation with no major cultural ties to the United States and few political ties prior to the administration of Woodrow Wilson, has become a focal point in American politics after the Trump administration approved giving refugee status to 59 South Africans, all of white Afrikaner descent, in mid-May. The decision caused outrage among the American left and prompted Ramaphosa himself to condemn the refugees, deriding them as “cowards” for fleeing racist violent with their families.
“If you look at all national groups in our country, black and white, we’ve stayed in this country because it’s our country, and we must not run away from our problems,” Ramaphosa told reporters this month. “We must stay here and solve our problems. So, when you run away you’re a coward and that’s a real cowardly act and I expect every South African to stay here, and we work together, and we solve our problems.”
Reports indicate that as many as 70,000 South Africans are seeking to take refuge in the United States.
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