Did the footage shown to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on May 21, 2025 in the Oval Office capture a mass grave of "over 1,000 of white farmers", as claimed by U.S. President Donald Trump? No, that's not true: The video showed a 2020 temporary memorial, not a burial site. People who participated in the memorial demonstration did not refer to the crosses as graves, and later images of the place on Google Maps did not show that memorial.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X published on May 21, 2025. It opened:
In the Oval Office, @POTUS confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's denial of the shocking treatment his country's white farmers are facing with video evidence.
Watch the video and ensuing discussion in its entirety...
At the 5:11 mark in the shared clip, President Donald Trump was heard saying the following, as the video played on a television set:
These are burial sites... over 1,000 of white farmers and... those cars aren't driving, they're stopped there to pay respects to their family member who was killed.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
The video of what appeared to be crosses installed alongside a road, however, was not recent. It has been online since September 2020, when it was published on YouTube under the caption that reads, as translated by Chrome:
Many community members paid tribute to the well-known couple Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were murdered in cold blood on their farm in the area of Normandien near Newcastle, last weekend with a march against farm attacks and murders.
According to the government press release condemning the crime (archived here), the couple was shot and killed on August 29, 2020.
Shortly after that, locals organized a rally.
One of the participants, Darell Brown, told a South African public broadcaster at the time that the crosses represented those farmers who were murdered but did not say that the victims were laid to rest at that specific location.
Answering BBC's questions (archived here) in 2025, Rob Hoatson, another farmer involved in organizing that march, confirmed that the crosses were a temporary memorial, not a mass grave.
The site of the demonstration (archived here) photographed for Google Maps in 2023 did not display any crosses.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks addressing claims about current events are here.
