The Trump administration has once again turned on South Africa to serve as a distraction from its mounting list of troubles. Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio has announced new visa restrictions for laughably fictitious infringements by African countries.
It is time we stood up for South Africa in the court of Donald J. Trump. Too much harassment has its price, and it is time President Trump’s America paid that price. They have harassed South Africa for far too long. “Buffaloes are held by ropes, man by his words”, says an African proverb. “A donkey always says thank you by a kick,” says another African proverb. Let’s see the kick now.
Why am I fuming? On Thursday 17 September 2026, Trump’s Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio, emboldened by the cavalier manner in which Trump has treated South Africa so far, announced a new visa restriction policy for South African officials on the false claim that White Afrikaner South Africans are being persecuted in their country by officials who will not be tolerated in the US.
Said Rubio in an official statement: “The United States remains gravely concerned about racially motivated crime and government-sponsored discrimination occurring against the Afrikaners and other minority populations in South Africa, including race-based discriminatory legislation, threats of land expropriation without compensation, and incitement of racial violence through dehumanising chants and slogans …
“The South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns and so today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy … targeting foreign nationals who are responsible for, or complicit in, the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa …
“The United States will not allow such behaviour to go unchecked. These actions directly undermine peace, economic stability, and the rule of law, and they are incompatible with the pillars of America’s foreign policy.”
Rubio then turned to the supplicant, saying, “We once again strongly urge the South African government to quickly address these egregious actions.” Then moments later, he took to social media to accuse the South African government of pursuing “racial grievance against the Afrikaner minority” and pledged that those responsible for the “injustices have no place in the United States”.
You could only shake your head in disbelief. Which South Africa are Trump, Rubio, and the others in the Trump administration think they are talking about and kicking around? The one headed by President Cyril Ramaphosa? This is pure comedy – unfortunately the consequences are anything but funny.
Or has geography, not one of the strongest points of the Americans by nature, become a problem here? Methinks so. Because everyone on the face of this planet (except the astonishingly ignorant) knows that inside Ramaphosa’s South Africa nothing of the sort described by Rubio and Trump is happening there. So why are they banging on all the time about something that is not happening in South Africa?
Last time, in May 2025, Trump again ambushed Ramaphosa in the White House with a video that he claimed to show a “burial site” of thousands of white crosses. The American President had deliberately planned to use the alleged “burial site” to humiliate Ramaphosa in front of the whole wide world. But who got humiliated?
Even the Afrikaner population that Trump thought he was defending came out against him to say there was no such “burial site” in South Africa. John Steenhuisen, the then White leader of South Africa’s second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), and the Agriculture Minister in the governing coalition led by Ramaphosa, described Trump’s claim as “nonsense”.
Jaco Kleynhans, a senior official in Solidarity, the Afrikaner lobby group, chipped in to reveal that he had told American officials that “there is no genocide in South Africa and there are no government seizures [of land]”.
Comically, Trump’s “burial site” turned out to be a farm on the P39-1 road in Normandien in KwaZulu-Natal, a four-hour drive from busy Johannesburg. Roland Collyer, an Afrikaner farmer, told a BBC correspondent, Pumza Fihlani, who had driven there a day after Trump’s claim, that the crosses were put up as a “temporary memorial” for “his aunt and uncle Glen and Vida Rafferty, bludgeoned to death in their home five years ago”.
“So the video that you guys have been seeing,” he told the BBC correspondent as they stood together by the roadside, “happened along this section of the road.”
[Pointing down the hill, towards a village where many black families live in mud huts, the BBC reported, Collyer explained]: “There were crosses planted on both sides of the road, representing lives that have been taken on farms, farm murders. All the way from the bridge down below, up to where we’re standing at the moment.”
The man who actually “organised the crosses”, businessman Rob Hoatson, also spoke to the BBC. He was one of the neighbours of the murdered Raffertys. He told the BBC that he “organised the crosses to capture public attention, such was the shock over the couple’s deaths.”
Hoatson explained: “It’s not a burial site,” he said, adding that “Trump is prone to exaggeration. It was a memorial. It was not a permanent memorial that was erected. It was a temporary memorial.”
For the record, “in 2022,” according to the BBC, “two local men, Doctor Fikane Ngwenya and Sibongiseni Madondo, were convicted for the murders of the Raffertys, as well as robbery, and sentenced to life and 21 years’ imprisonment, respectively.”
In fact, violent criminals who have attacked farms make no distinction between White and Black farmers, and it is reported that the majority of victims are Black, not only in rural areas but also in urban areas. It is a matter of law and order, not racial discrimination or profiling.
A catalogue of lies
But who can tell this to Mr Trump? So that he and his Ministers will stop assailing our ears with a stream of lies about South Africa.
Since the end of Apartheid, Blacks and other discriminated racial groups (who have jobs) or run their own businesses have seen a massive rise in their incomes, but this has not led to Whites losing their income superiority. They still enjoy incomes that are 20 times higher than those of Blacks. Strange form of discrimination this!
So why are Mr Trump and his Administration refusing to believe anybody? While I am writing this piece, Trump is speaking on TV at the UN General Assembly (on Tuesday, 22 September 2026), and I am hearing him say horrifyingly about Iran: “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” In short, genocide.
Boy, what does Trump feed on? Two African proverbs say: “Blind belief is dangerous” and “A loved one has no pimples.” Mr Trump, you have pimples! Stop throwing your weight around, and remember: “A big chair does not make a king.” And crucially, “rulers are like hills; when darkness falls, they all look alike”. Your “darkness” will definitely fall, Mr Trump. So be humble.
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Rubio’s new visa restrictions are pure comedy
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