{"id":267117,"date":"2018-08-24T07:03:57","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T05:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=267117"},"modified":"2018-08-24T07:03:57","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T05:03:57","slug":"trump-misleads-again-with-claim-of-south-africa-farm-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/267117\/trump-misleads-again-with-claim-of-south-africa-farm-murders\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump misleads again with claim of South Africa farm murders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump built on his reputation for issuing misleading and false claims with a tweet late Wednesday asserting that there is \u201clarge scale killing\u201d of farmers in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Trump issued the tweet following a segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight, a Fox News program, in which the eponymous host examined a proposal by the ruling party in South Africa to expropriate farms from white landowners. Carlson called the policy racist, and interviewed an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute who criticized it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers,\u201d Trump tweeted.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I have asked Secretary of State <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SecPompeo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@SecPompeo<\/a> to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. \u201cSouth African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TuckerCarlson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@TuckerCarlson<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FoxNews?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@FoxNews<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/1032454567152246785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 23, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nCarlson\u2019s report didn\u2019t mention murders of farmers and it wasn\u2019t immediately clear where Trump got the idea. The White House didn\u2019t respond to questions about the tweet.<\/p>\n<p>The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement criticizing Trump\u2019s missive, saying that it echoed white supremacists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is extremely disturbing that the president of the United States echoed a longstanding and false white supremacist claim that South Africa\u2019s white farmers are targets of large-scale, racially-motivated killings by South Africa\u2019s black majority,\u201d the ADL said in the statement.<\/p>\n<p>There were 47 South African farmers murdered in the 12 months ending in March, according to Agri SA, a South African farm lobby. There were more than 19,000 homicides nationwide in the same 12-month span, according to law enforcement authorities.<\/p>\n<p>The number of farmers killed was about a third of the highs reached in the late 1990s, after the country\u2019s majority-black population took power from its previous white minority government.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s tweet triggered a diplomatic dispute with South Africa\u2019s government, which summoned the US ambassador to explain the president\u2019s \u201cunfortunate comments,\u201d according to the country\u2019s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.<\/p>\n<p>The tweet also caused a selloff of the nation\u2019s currency, the rand, which sank almost 2 percent against the dollar before paring losses.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa has not seized or condoned the seizure of any white-owned farms to date and hasn\u2019t changed its constitution, although it is considering doing so. The constitution currently allows for expropriation of land if \u201cjust and equitable compensation\u201d is paid, which some argue could include paying nothing.<\/p>\n<p>European colonists stripped most of South Africa\u2019s black natives of their right to own property under a 1913 law.<\/p>\n<p>A government land audit released in February showed that whites own 72% of the country\u2019s 37 million hectares of agricultural land. Since 1994, when the ruling African National Congress replaced the apartheid government, the state has bought about 4.9 million hectares and assigned 3.4 million hectares to new owners.<\/p>\n<p>Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a persistent critic of Trump who is retiring after this term, cautioned the president\u2019s use of Twitter to deliver messages on foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a danger in conducting foreign policy by tweet after viewing a single press report,\u201d Flake tweeted Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst, land reforms have been proposed in parliament in South Africa, but not yet adopted. Second, there is no \u201clarge scale killing of farmers\u201d going on in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s tweet was the latest in a series of false and misleading claims he has made during his campaign and presidency. He has said without substantiation that 3 million undocumented immigrants cast votes for his opponent, Hillary Clinton; that former President Barack Obama spied on his campaign; and that he would not personally benefit from the tax cuts he signed into law last year, among many others.<\/p>\n<p>Just 34% of voters trust Trump over news media to tell the truth about important issues, according to a poll July 25 by Quinnipiac University.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/266925\/government-responds-to-trumps-land-tweet-as-rand-takes-a-knock\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Government responds to Trump\u2019s land tweet as rand takes a knock<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump built on his reputation for issuing misleading and false claims with a tweet late Wednesday asserting that there is \u201clarge scale killing\u201d of farmers in South Africa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":105427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-267117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267125,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267117\/revisions\/267125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}