US President Donald Trump and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office. Photo source: White House / Zuma Press / Profimedia
US President Donald Trump presented a video capture on Wednesday in the Democratic Republic of Congo as “proof” of alleged massacres against southern Africa, during a tense meeting with his South African counterpart Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, writes Reuters.
“These are all white farmers who are buried,” Trump said, showing a printed sheet with an article illustrated with that image.
In fact, the image comes from a Reuters report filmed in the city of Goma, Congo, and shows humanitarian workers who raise mortar bags after a bloody M23 rebel attack supported by Rwanda. Reuters had published the video on February 3 and subsequently authenticated by his fact-returning team.
The article presented by Trump was published by American Thinker, a conservative blog, and treating racial stresses and conflicts in South Africa and Congo. Although the image was not explicitly labeled in the post, this was a frame from a video on YouTube about Congo, credited Reuters.
The White House has not offered any comment. Andrea Widburg, deputy editor-in-chief of the publication and the author of the article, acknowledged for Reuters that Trump “wrongly identified the image”.
However, he defended the article, which criticized the “dysfunctional and obsessed government of Ramaphosa, and said that he was doing light on” increasing pressure “on the South African whites.
The testimony of the journalist who arrived in Goma
The image was filmed by journalist Reuters Djaffar of Kanty during a collective funeral after the M23 attack on the city of Goma.
“It was extremely difficult for journalists to enter there that day … I had to negotiate directly with the M23 and collaborate with the Red Cross in order to film. Only Reuters has these images,” he explained.
“To see Trump using what I filmed in Congo to show Ramaphosa that the whites are killed by blacks in South Africa was an absolute shock,” Al Kanty said.
Ramaphosa has been in Washington to try to repair relations with the US, after months of constant critics of Trump related to the land policies of South Africa, his international orientation and the alleged discrimination of the white minority, accusations rejected by the South African authorities.
During the television meeting, Trump interrupted the discussion to broadcast a video that, according to him, would demonstrate a “genocide” of white farmers, a theory of conspiracy commonly found in right -wing extremist circles, based on false information.
He then continued to browse more printed articles about alleged crimes against whites in South Africa, repeating with emphasis: “death, death, death, terrible death.”
