Washington: U.S. President Donald Trump displayed a misleading image during a tense Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, falsely claiming it showed white South African farmers being buried.
In reality, the image—taken from a Reuters video—depicted humanitarian workers handling body bags in Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The footage was shot during a mass burial following violent clashes between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, and was published by Reuters on February 3. The agency’s fact-checking team has since verified the true context of the video.
Trump presented a printout of a blog post from American Thinker, a conservative publication, during the meeting. The post discussed racial issues in both South Africa and Congo and included a still from the Reuters video, misused as an illustration of alleged anti-white violence in South Africa. The blog did not explicitly mislabel the image but included a link to the original YouTube video sourced from Reuters.
According to Reuters, American Thinker managing editor Andrea Widburg acknowledged the misidentification and attributed it to Trump. She also defended the blog post’s commentary on the challenges facing white South Africans, criticizing what she described as Ramaphosa’s “race-obsessed Marxist government.”
Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty, who filmed the original footage in Goma, expressed shock at seeing his work misused by Trump. “President Trump used my image to make a false point about violence in South Africa,” Al Katanty said. “That image came from a war zone in Congo, not South Africa.”
The meeting came during Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington aimed at easing diplomatic tensions. Trump has repeatedly criticized South Africa’s land reform efforts and alleged mistreatment of the country’s white minority—claims South African officials have denied.
During the meeting, Trump interrupted proceedings to show a video, claiming it was proof of genocide against white farmers—an unfounded conspiracy theory popular in far-right circles. He also cited several printed articles, declaring, “death, death, death, horrible death.”
