Trump’s Remarks on South Africa’s Violent Crime Draw Surprising Local Backing

JOHANNESBURG — South Africans expressed approval of President Donald Trump‘s sharply critical statements from the Oval Office on Wednesday regarding killings in the country, analysts say.

The President showed video clips and gave South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa a sheaf of news clippings he said show farm murders. 

Many view this “ambush” by President Trump towards the South African leader as beneficial for the country, as it highlights the issues of rampant killings and the perceived inadequacies of President Ramaphosa’s government’s response to the problem.

In the last three months of 2024, approximately 6,953 individuals of all races were reported murdered in South Africa, according to police statistics. This equates to an average of 76 people killed every day.

Losi continued, “And the problem in South Africa, it is not necessarily about race, but it is about crime. And we think that we are here to say, how do we both nations work together to reset, to really talk about investment … to really address the levels of crime that we have in our country. “

Sources say that after previously refusing to let Elon Musk bring his Starlink satellite communications system into South Africa, citing the need for local partial ownership, Ramaphosa and his advisors have now realized that Starlink’s data services could help bring greater security, particularly to rural areas of the country.

In crime statistics for the first three months of this year released on Friday, which critics say are not verified independently, the Police Minister claimed five of the six people killed on farms were Black, and one was White. 

President Donald Trump, right, meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (AP/Evan Vucci)

However, with little effective police protection in the cities, and even less in the rural areas, a Black farmer’s comment sums up the worries of many South Africans today. Standing at the funeral of a rural White farmer, he said to an Institute of Race Relations representative “Although he’s White, we don’t look at the color. We are doing the same thing. Next time it’s going to be me.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the South African government for comment, but they did not respond.